#straw writes

"Woo-hoo!"

The thrill of knowing that he and the other two Peters had succeeded momentarily caused him to forget himself. His voice echoing back against the windowed walls of the nearby skyscrapers reminded him. He clapped one hand over his mouth and moved away from the ledge he stood on. Yes, those were definitely his lips, not the smooth expanse of spandex he should have felt. Swearing, he hastily smoothed out the crumpled mask in his hand and yanked it over his head.

"Ow! Mother—"

Another important detail lost in the euphoria: He hurt, badly, not just his face, but every inch of him. Dr. Connors and Max being out there somewhere, safe and (hopefully) sane made the pain worth it. Even more hopefully, the return of their sanity would keep them out of trouble for the time being. Peter had two important things to do before he went to check on his former nemeses. At least he could get both things done at the same place if he played his cards right.

Peter took several swift steps back to his original position. Then he stopped. All he needed to do was take a cab. The nagging voice in the back of his head that claimed he deserved no joy—installed there when Captain Stacy passed and firmly rooted after Gwen followed—came back with a vengeance. Go home, Peter, the slow way. Forget you ever believed you could be as happy as the others.

For a long moment, he gazed out into the hazy night with his jaw set. A simple thought interrupted this familiar torrent of self-flagellation: No. Not anymore.

And Peter flew.

He soared. He swooped. Wind rushed past him, unable to get a solid grip with the speed he used. Each dip was lower than the last; each high, higher. A wild laugh rose unbidden from his throat. Though he had never quit being Spider-Man again—not since the Rhino nearly flattened a little boy in Peter's absence—he had not allowed himself to enjoy the gig either. Now, free for the first time in ages, the butterflies that erupted in his stomach whenever the street rose up to meet him went straight to his head, leaving him almost giddy.

Perhaps the source of his jubilance was the same thing leading him onward to his destination like some sort of homing beacon.

Of course, Spider-Man couldn't just waltz right inside. Doing so would cause undue commotion. Reluctantly—because every second he put this off risked his succumbing to the voice inside his head that said he shouldn't bother—Peter landed softly in a dim, brown side street containing one of his many stashes of civilian clothes. Moments later, he emerged to join the endless stream pedestrians. Despite the painful heartbeat in his palms making the moment feel eternal, it did not take long to find an opportunity to stroll through the automatic front doors of Forest Hill Hospital's emergency room.

Bright white light pierced his eyes. Good thing he knew this place like the back of his hand. The murky blur to his right covered in vague smears of various skin colors was the waiting area. The bright square ahead led to the hospital hallway. And up front sat a desk the same dingy white as the floor. Here Peter stopped and offered a winning (if still blinded) smile.

"Hey, Marge. How are you doing this fine—er—early morning?" he asked.

A dark-skinned woman wearing scrubs patterned in splotches of teal, pink, and purple looked up from her paperwork to turn an unimpressed gaze on him. "Peter Parker, you've been fighting again."

"What? No. I—ouch!" The simple act of casually leaning an arm on Marge's reception desk made his shoulder scream. He could only imagine what he looked like, and hastily amended: "Okay. I've been fighting a little. But I swear, this time, these guys came at me first."

"Don't they always."

Marge's attempt at staying annoyed fell flat. The crease of concern between her eyebrows became increasingly obvious until, a moment or two later, she reached for the phone next to her.

"What are you doing?" Peter asked.

"Paging May."

Peter forced a laugh that made his entire mouth taste like rust. "You don't need to do that. I don't want to bother her at work."

"Peter, you practically dragged one of your legs behind you the whole way in here. Now, she doesn't have to be involved in your care, but she should know you're receiving treatment."

"I didn't come here to get treated."

"What other reason would you have for coming to the emergency room in your condition?"

"I came to see..."

But he trailed away as the reply to Marge's question came walking straight through the set of doors leading to the hallway all on her own. Every other color in the room seemed to seep into her and light her up from the inside out: [color] skin with most of the makeup rubbed off after so many hours at work; [color] hair disheveled from running this way and that all shift; [color] scrubs splattered with vibrant yellow-brown vomit across their fronts.

[F Name] [L Name] did not show any sign that she noticed Peter standing there gawking at her from a few feet away. She pushed a wheelchair containing a squirming, booted child to the exit, all the while rattling off a list of instructions and advice to the concerned woman walking in step with her. And then the child hopped right off the chair and ran out to a waiting car idling just outside. [Name] waved them goodbye before finally, finally turning around to lock eyes with Peter.

Something behind him thunked—Marge putting the phone back down. She smiled at him knowingly. "If she's who you came to see, get on with it. We're busy. She'll make sure you take some ibuprofen anyway."

He returned her grin while nervously fluffing the hair on the back of his head. During this exchange, you marched wordlessly right past the desk in the direction from which you had come. Peter started, then jogged after you.

"[Name]!"

You stopped, arms crossed, eyebrows barely raised. "Peter, you've been fighting again."

"They hit me first."

"Don't they always."

"That's what I said," Marge chimed in. Peter motioned for her to stay out of it, but this only caused her to lean a hand on her chin to clearly signal she had no intention of doing so.

While he was distracted once again, you turned to leave. Peter reached out to grab your shoulder and stop you without thinking. He released you immediately, as though gripping you like that caused him pain—and it did, but his rapid retraction had more to do with the flash of warning in your [color] eyes than anything else. Just to emphasize that he hadn't meant anything by it, he shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. The cuts on his fingers stung in protest, but he thought he did a passable job of not wincing when he asked:

"Where are you going?"

"To get May," you answered flatly.

"No!" Why did everyone insist on doing that first? Wasn't he a grown-ass man in his mid-20s? "I promise I will talk to May in a little bit. But I didn't come here to get patched up. I came to see you."

"While you're actively bleeding from the face?"

"Am I? Sh—" He'd taken your bait and pressed a thumb right into a gash on his cheek. "Not the point right now. I just need to talk to you."

You made to turn again. "If you're still here when I go on my break—"

"Now. Please?"

He didn't know exactly what got you to change your mind. You had seen him in worse condition than this since you'd met him. Maybe he'd made the pleading note in his voice just a little too obvious. After a moment of heart-stopping hesitation, you sighed in defeat.

"Marge, is it all right if I take my fifteen now?" you asked.

"Harper should be back any minute. Just don't take longer than fifteen," said Marge.

You flashed her a thumbs-up before pushing through the metal doors. No one objected to Peter following you inside, nor remaining at your heels as you weaved your way through the busy hospital corridors to the employees-only break room. He spent so much time there that some members of the staff probably thought he worked there, too. Thankfully, no such staff members (or those who knew he only came to have lunch with May and spend time with [Name]) were taking their breaks when the two of you walked inside.

The place smelled like stale coffee and iodine. That hadn't changed. But had it always been this gleaming in here? The cheap plastic card table blazed white; the wobbly chairs screamed orange; and the sofa glared blue. He soon became too captivated by watching you move to the back counter containing the coffee maker and a microwave to wonder more about the loud colors. All Peter could do was stare until you snapped him out of his trance via shoving a hot paper cup in his face.

"Do me a favor and try to stay awake and upright long enough to tell me why I'm giving up my break for you, won't you?" you said.

He grabbed the cup and took a sip without answer. Once the scalding liquid sloshed into his stomach, he coughed out a laugh.

"God, that's awful!"

"Peter? Are you...okay?"

"Fine. Better than fine, actually. Everything—everything's so beautiful, you know? Even Forest Hill's terrible coffee."

As if to prove his point, he gulped down the rest of the sludge, then smacked his lips for dramatic effect. This did not seem to settle your nerves. Quite the contrary; now you looked downright worried.

"Did you hit your head during the fight?"

"No. No, I promise. Listen, I need..."

It struck him in that moment that he might have skipped a few steps. If he moved forward like this, he'd only end up in the same old downward, on-again, off-again spiral that he had had with Gwen. Two ghosts bogged him down enough as it was. The last thing he needed was a third. And yes, Gwen had known, made her own decisions that played a part in that horrible night. But the other MJ—the MJ he had saved—knew as well. He couldn't not give you the same choice when he wanted so badly for this to work out.

"I need to show you something," he finished.

"Can you do it in less than twelve minutes?"

"Uh..."

"Peter, I need to keep this job."

"I'll try."

Then...nothing happened. The ancient fridge buzzed audibly in the background. You drummed your fingers against the sides of your cup. Peter held in his breath. Several precious seconds were wasted in utter silence.

"Well?" you asked pointedly.

Peter, having got lost in your eyes again, started. "Well, what?"

"Are you going to show me or what?"

"Now? Here?"

"I got the impression you thought it was kind of important, yeah."

"I can't exactly show you here..." he said, trailing off into a weak laugh.

You exhaled sharply, discarded your nearly-untouched coffee in the bin, and muttered, "I'm getting back to work."

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No."

He couldn't let this opportunity pass him by. That awful voice hissing about his unworthiness would only get louder the more time he spent with you without saying anything; it always did. Peter sped past you before you could reach the door. This time, he didn't apologize when he touched you. His fingers wrapped firmly yet carefully around your wrist, and he pulled.

"Peter!" you snapped as you stumbled after him.

The eyes he turned on you were pleading. "We don't have to go far. Okay?"

He took your silence—and the relaxing of your arm inside his grip—as permission to continue. But he knew that didn't pause the rapidly-dwindling countdown hanging over his head. Swiftly (although much less swiftly than he would have liked or was capable of), he led you down the hallway to a door with a gleaming red "EXIT" sign above it. This he tugged you through after he made sure no one else was watching.

Thank God, no one had chosen this moment to take a smoke break either. The early morning air was crisp, but the tang of nicotine lingered still. The barest hint of sunrise pink haloed over the tops of the buildings surrounding this backstreet.

"And what exactly are we supposed to be doing out here?" you asked.

"Hold on just a—hey, what's that over there?"

"What's what?"

In the half-second you turned in the direction of the closest street, Peter shot the lurking security camera with a wad of webbing. The camera probably didn't work, but better safe than sorry. And he did it just in time, too. You stopped craning your neck to see past the distant violet streetlight to shoot him a look of outright suspicion.

"I must be seeing things. Probably got conked on the head real good during my fight. Sorry about that."

"You've got less than ten minutes now."

"Okay. Hold on. Just...don't freak out, all right?"

"Why would I..."

Without breaking eye contact with you, Peter backed up against the brick wall, pressed his palms right to it, and slowly inched his way upward until he clung there several feet about your head.

"Oh, my God," you said.

Peter cracked a smile. "Surprise?"

You lifted your shaking hands to your mouth, lowered them, and moved slowly forward. Peter disengaged from the wall upon seeing your approach. He landed neatly on the ground just in front of you before digging around in his back pocket long enough to find his wadded-up Spider-Man mask. Your sharp inhale seemed to indicate you recognized it.

"I guess they really do always hit you first," you said, your eyes fixed on the red-and-blue material."

Peter chuckled, a hopeful sound. "Most of the time."

The way your eyes locked on his silenced that hope. You took one more step nearer. Then you asked the last question he expected:

"Why are you telling me this?"

Not Why didn't you tell me before? Not Who do you think you are? Not even How dare you burden me with this knowledge? Only curiosity as to why you could be trusted with his secret now—and Peter knew then that it was because it had never been about trusting you. It had always been about trusting himself.

His arm holding his mask flopped to his side. "Because I have something more important to tell you, but you needed to know this first."

The two of you stood close enough that your breaths mingled when you said: "And that is?"

"I love you, [Name]."

You shivered. Peter gulped and went on:

"I don't think I love you. I know it. I've known it for years, but I didn't have the courage to say anything about it. I still don't know if this is the right thing to do, but I—but I—but I—"

"Peter." A gentle palm to his chest quieted him. "Breathe. Just tell me what brought all this on tonight."

"I think you're my MJ," he blurted.

"Huh?"

"I got sent to another universe where there was another Peter Parker. Actually, there were two other Peter Parkers. And all of us are Spider-Man—well, the one from that universe is more of a Spider-Boy. Anyway, nothing was perfect for them either."

Your mouth fell open, and Peter went on:

“The younger Peter, he’s got these big plans to go to MIT with his friends. Can you believe it? Me? At MIT? And the other one—well, he's got a bad back, but he just had this calmness about him that I sure as hell don't have. And we got to talking, and it turns out they both have the same girlfriend—okay. Not the same-same girlfriend. That—that sounds really gross. The older one's nearly 50. But they're both called MJ. And that got me thinking about how I don't have an MJ, and maybe that makes a difference. Peter—the older Peter—he said—"

A distinct glaze had covered your eyes. Way to not stick the landing, Peter.

"Okay. I—I get it. Multiverses. Multi-Peters. It's a lot to adjust to. You just found out about the whole Spider-Man thing. Maybe take it slow. Maybe don't mention that magic exists in this other universe?"

You gave an infinitesimal nod in reply.

When Peter spoke again, he did his absolute best to speak more slowly and skip straight to the point: "I haven't let myself be happy since Gwen died. I didn't think the universe would allow somebody like me to be happy. But now I think I could be happy...maybe...with you...if you're interested?"

You stared. At least your eyes had returned to their typical sheen. That had to be a good sign, right? Peter held his breath and waited. Spiders could stay underwater for a long time, so he didn't have to breathe again anytime soon. But even his lungs began to burn before you said another word. He had just realized what in incredibly stupid thing he'd just done when you finally moved, launching forward to grab a fistful of the front of his sheet and yank his mouth right up against yours. HIs cry of pain was quickly stifled.

The kiss wasn't long—at first. You drew away almost immediately. Peter, on the other hand, stepped closer. He no longer cared that every single inch of body hurt. Both your lips moved together with such synchronicity that any passerby might have thought you and Peter had been kissing for years. His hands found your waist. Your fingers found his hair. When you parted, Peter's lips stung in the best way possible.

"Wow. Shouldn't you have taken me to dinner first?" he asked.

Your pupils remained blown wide even when you narrowed your eyes at him. "After all the years of flirting without any hint you reciprocated?"

"Yeah. Okay. I'll take you out first."

"You're gonna have to get a consistent job first, Parker."

"You might need to, too. Pretty sure we were kissing for more than what was left of your break."

With a yelp, you pulled your phone out of your scrub pocket. Whatever you saw there caused you to scurry for the door back inside. "If I get fired over a love confession, I swear I'll—"

"Break up with me?" he offered.

You paused for a second, then you turned a soft expression toward him. "Promise you're not going to meet a girl actually named MJ before the end of my shift?"

He lifted his right hand and solemnly said, "You're my MJ, [Name]. It just took me a while to work that out."

You disappeared only to reemerge a moment later. "Get some sleep before our dinner date. You look like death warmed over. I can't be seen with you out in public like this."

"All right, all right. I'll take a nap if you promise not to wear that top tonight."

The look on your face when you spotted the splatter of throw up across your clothes indicated you'd entirely forgotten about it during that kissing session. Still, you kept it together and did not deign to respond to him as you went back inside. Just as Peter went to turn and leave, you stuck your head out once again.

"And take some pain meds, or I really will tell May you got in another fight. And I won't tell her whose fault it was."

He lifted both his hands in surrender. Seeing this, you smiled, hesitated, and blew him a kiss. You didn't come back this time around. Peter slowly lowered his arms and laughed. The bright sound of it sparkled into the lightening sky, now Easter blue and pink and yellow above the familiar gray-brown tops of the buildings. Peter strode for the nearby street, only to stop a few inches away, bite his lip, and slip into the remaining shadows to change.

You screamed, lurched toward the nearest edge of the mattress, and tumbled chin-first onto the soft rug below.

Someone—whoever the voice and the arm and the chest belonged to, you guessed—snored themselves properly awake. Now there could be no escape. Though you scrambled to get yourself into a kneeling position, you barely managed that much before the sheets above you shifted to reveal a shirtless man sitting in their midst.

"Was it an emergency, then?" he asked around a yawn. "I didn't hear a siren. Are you sure we need to get up this early when we don't absolutely have to?"

No reply occurred to you. Your entire being felt frozen to the spot.

The man cracked open a single green eye to look at you. The arms he'd risen in a luxurious stretch fell to his sides. "[Name], are you all right?"

There in the bed you'd only just vacated sat Loki Laufeyson, a man you knew only as a fictional character in the MCU. And he wasn't just shirtless either. As the silky sheets slid a few more inches down his sides, you saw that the man had no clothing on at all. You squeaked as you clapped your hands over your face—though what for, you didn't know. All signs pointed to you having seen him naked already, although you could find no memory of the event.

When had you last attended a comic convention anyway? And sure, people teased you about your crushes on fictional characters even as you aged into adulthood, but you weren't this pathetic. Even after being out of any long-term relationship for months, you weren't so desperate that you'd stoop to having one-night stands with random cosplayers!

"I should hope not," said the man. "I suspect many of the cosplayers downstairs don't bathe regularly."

Oops. You'd made that last self-depreciating comment out loud. A deep, shuddering breath preceded the removal of your hands from your eyes. Still, you kept your gaze carefully averted from the man's pale torso as you replied: "I didn't mean to offend you. You smell pretty good, as far as I can tell."

The following pause extended so long that you dared to allow yourself a glance at his face. His sleepy expression faded as the two of you stared at one another. Somehow, this looked movie-accurate, too. If your heart hadn't been thundering in your chest from sheer terror, you might have asked him for a headshot. Then again, probably not. How could you pin up a photograph of a man you'd slept with for no other reason than that he happened to look uncannily like an attractive movie character?

The Loki lookalike opened his mouth, seemed to think better of saying whatever was on his mind, closed his mouth, then threw his legs over your side of the bed. "Is there any particular reason you're sitting on the floor?" he asked.

Mostly because you weren't confident that your own legs would hold you up if you tried to stand. Your head felt fuzzy and light; the curtains shifting in the breeze from the heater sent sparkles across your vision. You really didn't need to add vomiting on a hot stranger's rug in front of said hot stranger to your list of suffered mortifications that morning.

"I don't remember how I got here," you said weakly.

"Well," he patted the empty space next to him on the bed, smirking, "why don't you come back up here, and we'll jog your memory with a little reenactment?"

You surged to your feet. "No!"

"No?"

"Thank you! No, thank you. I appreciate the offer, but this is really not like me at all. I'm late enough for work as it is."

"I thought you had the day off." Now the cosplayer sounded confused.

"I'm sorry that I lied to you." The apology probably would have meant more had you recalled lying to him about such a thing in the first place, or if you'd put in any effort at all to sound sincere. You were too busy craning your neck every which way to give your tone much thought.

"Are you looking for something?"

"My clothes."

"Have you tried the closet?"

Considering your complete blackout of the night before, you sort of assumed anything you'd been wearing would have been haphazardly strewn around the room. Everything around you looked immaculate—no, not just immaculate. Glistening. Gold and green. Grand. The idea that you'd bedded a man serious enough to keep his bedroom in character made the whole place blur as you swayed and groaned.

"[Name], what's going on? Have you fallen ill?"

You hadn't been drunk enough to experience a hangover since your college days. But whoever this guy was, as worried as he sounded, he didn't need to know that this was your first in quite some time. He'd already taken advantage of the situation from the sound of things. No need to give him more ammunition.

"Please just give me my clothes," you begged him. "I can't go to work like this."

"I don't see why not."

"Look, it was sweet of you to lend me these pajamas. They're actually really comfortable. And I promise that I will still take them home, get them cleaned, and return them to you as quickly as possible."

"That might come across as an insult. I believe Mother intended them to be a gift."

"I've never met your mother!"

Panic swept through your veins in one mighty surge. Goosebumps erupted over your skin as your heart beat faster than ever. Your throat clamped around itself. You couldn't breathe. And just as quickly as the cold tingling began, a swift wave of heat crashed over you from head to toe. You heard rather than saw the man leave the bed to pad barefoot in your direction. Perhaps you'd have to reassess your statement about his scent; a sour, acrid smell that burned the back of your tongue arrived alongside him.

Once he reached you, he crouched so that your eyes were level with his. You couldn't recall collapsing. The lookalike lifted an arm to grasp your shoulder, but the moment he touched you, he hissed and drew back as though your skin burned him.

"Darling, I can't help you when you're doing that."

Doing what? Dying? Because that's what a complete stranger calling you "darling" made you feel like you were doing! By then, the fear had grown so overwhelming that you couldn't speak. Frantically shaking your head would have to do to keep him at this short distance.

"I see," he said. "I'll call the good doctor. At the very least, his little green friend should be able to touch you."

The man disappeared from your narrowed field of vision. You could hear faintly, over the noise of your own ragged breathing, him saying something to someone. His absence gave you a little time to think. Surely you could figure out how you'd found yourself in this situation, right? All you needed to do was think hard about what had happened to you the day before.

You couldn't come up with much. You'd gone to work. It had been a particularly long, boring day in the middle of the week. After clocking out sometime after sunset, you went straight home by yourself. A shooting star streaked across the night sky as you unlocked the door to your apartment, and a wish had swiftly passed through your mind: If only your life could be just a little less lonely.

A granted wish? No! That was insane. Wishes didn't come true. And what did people say about the answer to mysteries? Something about the most logical solution often being the correct one? You'd probably gone out to a bar for some socialization after work, met this guy, had one drink too many, and agreed to follow him home. Which only meant that this panic attack—another first in a long time—was completely stupid. Nothing could be more mundane than making enough bad choices of your own to land yourself in some weird guy's bed.

Someone knocked smartly on the door, which in turn knocked you right out of your trance. You could only imagine how embarrassed you would be when another person saw you like this. Being humiliated wouldn't help your current condition; the alien surroundings weren't doing much for you either. Closing your eyes, you tried to focus on the solid details around you: the soft rug beneath your hands; the familiar noise of New York traffic; the clean, almost herbal scent that filled the room; two voices, clear as day from across the room.

"Really? You had to answer the door naked?" asked a new male voice.

"Why, Doctor, whatever are you talking about? We both can clearly see that I am fully clothed."

"You know that I can smell your illusions, right?"

A pause, followed by a sulky: "I'll put on a robe."

"A real one this time, if you don't mind."

This exchange gave you the opportunity to attempt to control yourself. You still didn't feel a whole lot better. If you put any thought into your present circumstances, your breath began to hitch again—but being marginally less convinced of your own impending death counted as a win. How long such conviction would last, you could not say. The sound of two sets of approaching footsteps caused you to seize up once more.

"[Name]?" the new voice asked kindly. When you didn't reply, the man went on, "Is this why you called me?"

The cosplayer answered, "I am utterly at a loss as to what to do. One minute, we were fast asleep in bed. The next, she's flailing about, saying she has to get to work. And when I mentioned my mother, she just crumpled."

"As many mortals might at the mention of the goddess of love and beauty," the second man said wryly.

You felt your first stab of annoyance at this display. In fact, you managed to feel something other than fear long enough to open your eyes and glare at the Loki lookalike. "It's called a panic attack."

He blinked. "A panic attack? You don't have panic attacks."

Obviously, you did, and how would he know anyway after a single night of lovemaking? Before you could say as much, the newcomer sighed:

"You called me for a panic attack? Loki, for the last time, I am not a practicing medical doctor."

"Yes, right now you are practicing being a pain in my ass instead. All I want is for you to fix my girlfriend. Helen isn't here, so you'll have to do."

You really, really wished you hadn't looked at the second man. So many questions filled your mind as you listened to the conversation—who did this lookalike think he was, referring to you as his girlfriend? And he was so committed to the role that he had his friends call him Loki?—but every single one of them fell away as you spotted the man standing next to the cosplayer—another cosplayer, by the look of things, this one shorter and scruffier, with a mop of graying brown hair and a vibrantly purple shirt.

Moaning, you buried your face into your hands. "This cannot be happening."

Unfortunately, everything pointed to it happening. How? Why? You had no idea. But it really did seem as though you were sitting on the floor and trying not to cry in front of Loki Laufeyson and Bruce Banner, two people that, as far as you knew, didn't really exist! It made no sense at all. Nor would it ever, so long as you couldn't pull yourself together.

The two men murmured back and forth during the time you struggled to calm yourself using every ounce of panic disorder-related advice you'd come across during your several years of therapy. You ignored the conversation, breathed deeply in through your nose and out through your mouth, and concentrated on your slowing heartbeat until, at last, you had the capacity to think clearly again.

"Oh, thank Bor," said Loki as you exhaled a final sigh. Then, before you could do anything to prevent him drawing nearer, he threw himself onto the ground and pulled you into a warm embrace. "Stifling" might have been a better word for it. He didn't stink this time, but you stiffened as his soft arms wound around you nonetheless.

Bruce placed his hands on his thighs and leaned toward you. Loki didn't pay him the slightest bit of attention, choosing to focus instead on nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck. If you hadn't been so laser focused on simply staying upright, you probably would have squirmed out of his grip.

"[Name], are you feeling better now?" Bruce asked.

"No thanks to you, Doctor I’m-the-Smartest-Man-on-the-Planet," Loki said, voice muffled by your shoulder.

Bruce rolled his eyes and waited patiently for your answer. You hesitated to give one, "better" being a relative term in this situation. But maybe these two would have some idea of what was going on than you did.

"I'm fine now, thank you," you said before rushing on with: "I don't think I am who you think I am, though."

That got Loki to release you, though he didn't move far. "What do you mean? You're [F Name] [L Name], aren't you?"

"Well, yes. But—"

"Then I know exactly who you are."

"Let her finish, Loki," Bruce admonished him. The doctor’s brow crinkled with concern as he watched you chew on your lip in thought.

This might be more difficult than you'd first anticipated. After all, you couldn't just tell them they didn't really exist. Saying something like that would only get you sent to a loony bin. You'd rather skip that trip, much as you might have belonged there.

"Er," you began awkwardly, eyes flicking between both men's faces. "I, um, don't think I'm the right [F Name] [L Name]? I know that probably sounds crazy, but I really don't remember any of this," you gestured at the room at large," "or either of you," you motioned to them," or anything leading up to being here. This isn't my life. I don't know how I would have ended up in a place like this."

Loki and Bruce stared at you. The longer the silence dragged on, the more you shifted in place. They exchanged a look with one another. Then:

"Ah," said Loki.

Relief flooded through your veins. They knew. They believed you. Soon, you would be back home, or on the way there, and—

"Dr. Cho did warn us that something like this might happen," Bruce said.

And the relief vanished. "W-What?"

Nodding, Loki gripped both your shoulders in his hands. He looked far more serious than he had at any other point during that morning. "There was an...incident during a skirmish yesterday. You got overwhelmed. Helen stabilized you before things got too bad, but she did advise us to keep an eye out for any other possible side effects, such as amnesia."

Amnesia? Could that really be? A sharp tingle like that of an electric shock raced up your back. Although you wanted to come across as firm when you said, "No. I remember what I did yesterday. I wasn't here," you didn't manage to keep the quake out of your voice.

"And what do you think you did yesterday?"

"I went to work, and then I went straight home."

"Exactly!" Loki grinned. "See, you do remember. You're just a little confused on the details. I'm sure with a little help from yours truly, you'll be back to normal in no time."

Could that somehow be true? Could the life you recalled up until now be entirely made up? Could you have dreamed up a backstory to explain why you already knew Loki and Bruce despite knowing nothing about yourself? You didn't think so—but the all-too-familiar fatigue following your recent panic attack had started to sink into your bones. Thinking about anything that life-changing that deeply would have to wait until you recovered.

You climbed to your feet. If you could just lay down for a minute or two, perhaps then you could figure things out. Neither Bruce nor Loki attempted to stop your drowsy line in the direction of the bed. Just as you reached to peel the sheets back to slip under them, however, your stomach gave a tremendous gurgle.

Loki's laugh shattered the uncomfortable quiet. "Hungry, are we? Well, that we can fix right away."

He wrapped a hand around your wrist and whisked you out of the room without offering you a chance to protest.

******

Sometime later—your current state made it difficult to pinpoint an exact amount—you found yourself sitting at a huge black table located in front of a massive wall of windows. Outside unfolded a dizzying view of early morning traffic weaving through the streets all those stories below. Inside's view didn't inspire much more confidence; it only served to remind you that this wasn't your kitchen. Your kitchen had clutter, a single skylight, and the occasional dirty dish waiting in the sink gifted to you by your lazy past self. This kitchen looked as though it had never seen a dirty dish in its entire life—even though you had to assume seven or so people used it regularly.

But you couldn't really make that assumption, could you? In your reality (or your memories, if Loki and Bruce were to be believed), Bruce Banner and Loki did not live together, nor did they trade subtly friendly barbs back and forth with one another. Who knew what other differences existed that you hadn't noticed yet?

"And voilà! A breakfast fit for a queen."

Loki placed a plate in front of you with an exaggerated flourish. On that plate sat a slice of toast with butter, scrambled eggs, and a piece of bacon. "Fit for a queen," though? The toast was charred, the eggs runny, and even if you weren't too full of anxiety to eat, you couldn't imagine daring to put that bacon in your mouth. But he looked so pleased with himself that you voiced none of your thoughts; you simply smiled back tremulously.

His own grin softened. "You're very welcome," he said before leaning down to brush his lips against your nearest temple. This oasis of sweetness in a desert of confusion lasted all of a second before he startled you with a light smack on your back.

"Well, then, I'll be off!"

"Off? You're leaving?" you asked.

"Right, you'll have forgotten. Thor has insisted that we visit our parents today. Normally, I'd be begging you to come along, of course, to spare me a portion of the tedium. But I'd hardly be any sort of gentleman if I subjected you to Odin while you're in such a condition. So be a good girl, and I should be back this evening, provided traffic is light on the Bifrost.

"Look after my beloved for me, would you, Doctor?"

With that parting, Loki dashed from the room. Bruce hadn't even replied. He had to still be nearby, however. You could practically feel his concerned gaze boring into the back of your head. Most likely he just wanted to make sure you ate—but if he'd seen the fruits of Loki's labor, he'd know that waiting for that was a lost cause. It took what little energy you had leftover to keep yourself from shoving the food clear to the other end of the table.

Bruce did not say anything as the time stretched on. Neither did you. Just as the thought of asking to be returned to Loki's bedroom dawned on you (at least you knew it would be empty), someone else strutted into the dining room.

"Good morning, Toxic Avenger, Mr. Incredible!"

Whoever this new person was, their level of cheer made your head throb painfully. You turned your head in the direction of the entrance—and felt your jaw drop at the sight that awaited you. There in the room stood none other than Tony Stark—Iron Man—the beating heart of the MCU.

He flinched as your eyes met. "What happened to you? Didn't Dr. Cho tell your boy toy no mead for the foreseeable future? He knows that doesn't treat blunt force trauma, right?"

All you could do in answer was open and shut your mouth repeatedly. Logically, if Bruce and Loki were real, Tony would be, too. But given the complete lack of logic in the entire affair, you thought you could forgive yourself for short-circuiting like that.

Tony's expression grew more worried. "[Name]?"

"She experienced a panic attack this morning," Bruce supplied helpfully from somewhere just out of your line of vision.

"Yeah, yesterday was pretty rough, wasn't it?" Tony approached to pat you sympathetically on the shoulder, then grimaced as he spotted your plate. "And that looks even worse than you do. Let me guess: Prince Charming decided to cheer you up with a little force-fed poison."

You heard Bruce stifle a chuckle.

"And you let him! You know he knows that he's not supposed to waste my food on his disgusting attempts at gaining a culinary education!”

"I offered to help him. He declined."

"Of course he did. Not to worry, [Name]. Real breakfast is on the way."

Your plate of painstakingly- (if not well-)crafted food disappeared. Tony marched it over to a trash can and unceremoniously scraped its contents into the bin. As he went to place your unused utensils in the sink, he said:

"JARVIS, tell the team to meet up in the kitchen. Bruce and I are making waffles."

"I take it that you mean Bruce is making waffles while Tony gets in the way," Bruce remarked, but he didn't look upset. He simply rolled up his sleeves and walked over to the counter. Tony smirked at him while he pulled ingredients out of the fridge and cabinets.

"Hey, did I hear JARVIS right? Breakfast?"

This eager voice belonged to Clint Barton. Tony waved him into room.

"We're gonna have a 'We Survived' party following yesterday. Midgardians only."

Clint clapped his hand together before sauntering inside. "Excellent! Tasha's just finishing up her morning training session. She said she'll be here soon." He, too, joined the commotion in the kitchen. A few seconds later, you heard him call: "Do you want coffee or OJ, [Name]?"

Your tongue remained glued to the roof of your mouth. One after one, fantastical visions you had only seen on the screen entered your life and spoke as though they knew you—as though they cared about you. How could you even begin to respond?

Thankfully, you were spared having to do so by the arrival of Steve Rogers. He'd barely poked his head through the open doorway when Tony said, "Hit it, JARVIS!" and the Star-Spangled Banner erupted from what sounded like speakers hidden in every surface. Wearing a comically serious expression, Tony placed a hand over his heart. Clint saluted. Even Bruce got into things, albeit merely by hiding another smile behind his whisk and a bowl of waffle batter.

"Do you have to do that every morning?" Steve sighed.

"Learning real humor will do you some good, Cap. Think of it as your payment for the otherwise free room and board."

"I'm really starting to miss Brooklyn."

Steve caught your eye as he passed and offered you a nod. Thank goodness he stopped there. Any further attention from Captain America might have stopped your heart completely. You couldn't even manage to squeak in greeting. Then he had moved on to the group busy with food preparation:

"How about I make us some eggs, Dr. Banner."

"I'd appreciate some help from someone who actually understands that setting the stove on the highest dial doesn't simply produce the food faster," Bruce said.

Clint spluttered something about growing up on a diet of circus peanuts and popcorn; how was he supposed to know the finer details of making burgers?

"Thanks, Steve," Bruce added over this added noise of indignation.

Once the national anthem came to a close, JARVIS switched the music. Hard rock played next. At least he kept the volume low. The men continued to bicker and work in alternating bursts, and soon the smell of baking waffles, frying bacon, and percolating coffee filled the air. The thick scents made your stomach turn. You tried to grip your knees to keep yourself in the moment, but no matter how hard your knuckles tightened, you couldn't stop thinking.

Odds were you were just crazy. Now that you thought about it, the real crazy idea was that you'd somehow got sucked into an alternate universe where all your favorite characters were flesh and blood. No. You'd been in an accident, and it wouldn't be much longer before you woke up in a hospital bed. Acquaintances would no doubt react with raucous laughter when you described your coma dream to them.

Most people already thought your passion for certain fictional worlds was strange and oftentimes too intense. This was proof of your very own. Could there be a bigger loser than someone whose subconscious put them straight in the middle of a bad self-insert fan fiction?

"Good morning boys and girl." The chair across from you scraped against the tile floor as someone pulled it back. Into that chair plopped Natasha Romanoff. She took one look at you, then placed her elbow on the table and her cheek on her fist to shoot you a catlike grin. "Jeez, you look like you got hit by a truck—or maybe an Asgardian with a penchant for horned helmets. I think you looked better yesterday."

You couldn't do it. Natasha was the last straw. No one seemed to have noticed you hadn't said a single word since Tony had come in anyway. With nothing more than a vague mutter about needing the bathroom, you shot out of your chair and into the hall. You heard Natasha make a confused noise. No time to answer her. Your pace would not slow until you fully escaped this bizarre nightmare.

******

Night had started to fall when you staggered out of your apartment building on shaking legs. You collapsed onto the empty steps out front, too dazed to so much as hyperventilate. Above you stretched a matte, starless sky with red along the visible edges. All around you swarmed patches of light: warm windows, haloed streetlamps, blinding headlights. How often had you sat in this exact spot at this exact time to wait for taxis? These surroundings ought to have been something you knew. But you didn't know any of it, not anymore.

Your bare feet stung and your back ached from your day of running around Manhattan. Maybe fleeing from breakfast without trying to find proper supplies—like shoes or actual clothing—had not been your smartest plan. You had just been so scared of being stopped and so convinced that you'd soon regain consciousness that figuring out how to get back to the room you'd woken up in felt like a waste of time. Now you had to face the truth wearing someone else's pajamas, alone, with no money, no phone, and no food.

And what was the truth you had to face? That you didn't live here. Oh, no. Worse. You didn't just not live there anymore. You’d never lived there at all. A single chat with the building manager proved that. He refused to let you into your former home. Bursting into tears in reaction only got you so far as an allowance to accompany the manager to knock on the door. Someone did answer, and that someone didn't know you, and you didn't know them.

Probably the only reason either the resident or the manager had been polite enough to let you leave of your own volition was that you were recognizable. A day of wandering the streets had not changed your appearance enough to avoid stares, murmurs, and the occasional request for an autograph.

The same held true outside as well. People walking by came to a complete stop when they spotted you. More than a few phone cameras flashed in your direction. You heard more voices the longer you sat there: "Isn't that Cinnabar?" "What's an Avenger doing here?" "Do you think there's some emergency?"

Great. As if you didn't find your own terror difficult enough to deal with, your mere presence had passersby scared, too. Your disheveled appearance wouldn't help matters. If only you could have opened your mouth and reassured them—not that you had any idea what comfort you might offer someone else just then.

Slowly, you forced yourself to wobble to your feet. It had been December last you knew. The visible puffs of air raising from your lips indicated that that remained true. Without money or a coat, you needed to get moving if you wanted to find somewhere indoors to stay warm overnight. You wouldn't be able to make it back to Avengers Tower before being outside became dangerous, and truth be told, you weren't so sure you wanted to return.

You'd gathered a small crowd of onlookers during your vigil. They backed up to give you space as you made it to the sidewalk. Their mumbling grew so soft that you could no longer eavesdrop. Better for you to focus on taking one step after another. You could do that. One step after—

A tremendous flash of light lit up the sky. Thunder roared so loudly that the ground shook. Your head snapped upward as you pitched forward. Though your knees screamed in protest as they hit the cement, you could only find the room in your mind for one thought:

Hadn't the sky been clear only moments ago?

"Brother, I have found her!" a voice boomed nearly as loud as the thunder itself. Then you were swept up into a pair of huge, unyielding arms. You squirmed fruitlessly in their grasp, anxiety mounting. Your captor only laughed, a sound you could feel reverberating in their chest.

"Thor, release [Name] at once. You're clearly suffocating her."

"Apologies."

The arms withdrew, and you stumbled backwards as you gasped for air. A face above the limbs swan into view: Thor Odinson, grinning broadly down at you.

"We returned to find you missing. We were worried for you," he said.

"Quite," Loki agreed. "But come. Let us move to a more private area before you send the mortals to a hospital."

You allowed him to gently pull you up the street. A quick glance backward showed you the throng from earlier watching your trio leave. Several of them swayed on their feet; one or two held hands up to their heads. Now that you thought about it, Loki and Thor's arrival had brought with it another scent. This one was different from before. Minty, perhaps?

"Lucky for us, Asgardians are immune to this variety of your toxic fumes!" Thor said.

Heat filled your cheeks. Of course it would be that your first discussion with two of your fictional heroes would involve them casually chatting about your gas. Did that mean the stench from the morning had belonged to you as well? But Loki had not been able to touch you then, and as soon as he'd marched you to an empty street corner that evening, he gave you a brief hug. He cupped your face between his palms the moment he drew away.

"What in all the Ten Realms are you doing out here?" he asked.

The sudden softness of his expression made it impossible for you to lie. You opened your mouth, but no words exited it. "I just...needed to know for sure," you said after a moment of struggle.

"And you couldn't have waited for me to join you? Or, Heven forbid I encourage such behavior, but one of the many do-gooders we reside with?"

Tears filled your eyes at the suggestion. Normally you weren't such an easy crier, but it had been a long day, one of the longest in your memory. Refusing to ask for help from a group of people who didn't appear to mean you any harm felt incredibly stupid in retrospect. If these were the real Avengers—and you had mounting evidence that they were—obviously they would have assisted you. Maybe they would not have believed you, but they probably would have agreed to take you to your old apartment.

Loki's thumb caught one of the tears that spilled over your bottom eyelids. After that, he grazed his hands down your neck to your shoulders. "There, there. We'll simply blame your ordeal on Dr. Banner's horrendous babysitting. I swear, once that woman—"

Thor loudly cleared his throat. Loki paused, rolled his eyes, and went on:

"—Natasha enters a room, all his supposedly genius mind can think about is her ass—"

"Ah-hem."

Loki hesitated a little longer this time before continuing, "—her assets." He glared at his brother, who merely beamed in return and gave him two thumbs-up. "Still, one would believe he could remain focused on you for a few hours, given your condition."

"Loki tells me that you are suffering memory loss after yesterday's battle," Thor said.

You were too tired to argue the point any longer. More importantly, you were too tired to run. Thor and Loki would only catch you again in short order. Where you could run off to anyway, you didn't know. So you simply nodded and said, "It looks like it," in a small voice.

One of Loki's hands tightened around the shoulder it rested upon; he pulled you to his side as he took a step forward. "And as you are ill, I refuse to let you wander the streets like this a second longer. Let us retire to the tower, where I will draw you a hot bath and see to it that you are well taken care of until this has passed."

You cringed despite your bone-deep exhaustion. To your surprise, Loki noticed, moved a little away from you, and let you go.

"Or," he said slowly," you can clean yourself up however you see fit and get some rest. I can sleep on the floor."

Another peal of boisterous laughter shocked you awake; you'd almost forgotten that Thor was there. No longer could you ignore his presence when he slung one of his arms around you and then Loki in rapid succession. "Truly proof of the depths of my brother's love for you, [Name]! Never in all my years have I heard him offer to sleep anywhere but on the choicest of beds available."

"Yes, well..."

Were you actually going crazy, or did Thor's observation have Loki blushing? The bad lighting made it difficult to tell for sure. Before you could give the idea much space inside your head, Thor squeezed you tightly against himself.

"Then let us be home!" he cried, releasing Loki to spin his hammer in front of himself.

"Wait! Thor! No! There is a perfectly good subway system just a—"

"Better hold on tight, Loki, or [Name] and I shall make it to the tower long before you will!"

And you had the power to keep things that way: the people ignorant, the planet relatively safe. You would keep it that way. But curiously, the moment your toes brushed the open air at the end of the walkway, the entire world around you spun. Before you could pitch off the building, you sat down at the very edge of the pad. Sure, you planned to go down eventually, but you preferred to make the choice of when exactly—go out with a bit of dignity, so to speak.

Your shoes dangled off into nothingness as you watched the traffic pass. Falling would be so easy. You were in something of a time crunch. If the team stopped arguing for any amount of time, one of them was likely to notice you'd never returned from your alleged getting of fresh air. They would die for you. You'd realized that during the meeting. Whether they thought you were crazy for thinking you didn't belong here, whether they distrusted you because of your relationship with Loki—they all loved you enough to give their lives to keep you safe.

And since you loved them, too, you couldn't allow them to do it. The fact remained you could be right. You might have caused all this. Real or not, you couldn't sit by and let them get hurt. Yes, you might have read the occasional whump or hurt/comfort fic back in your world, but reading about Natasha being tortured would be very different from seeing it firsthand after she'd spent an evening painting your nails with meticulous care.

That your inhale following your decision came so steadily came as a pleasant surprise. So did how readily you stood again. The street beneath you didn't spin this time. All you needed to do was taken one step forward...

"There is a shortage of perfect faces in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours. Careful!"

So great was your shock at being addressed that you had startled and wobbled dangerously at the edge of the launchpad. Loki—of course no one else would be here to see you in this state but Loki—grimly caught your wrist to tug you to safety. Against your better judgment, you fell against his chest and trembled there. Intention to jump or not, you still didn't want to manage it by accident.

When the fear passed, you pushed away to glare at him. "What are you doing here?"

"Several things," he answered. "First and foremost, I'm ensuring that you don't kill yourself."

"Well, that's too bad, because I don't remember asking for your permission to save the world."

"Won't you at least hear me out? Come. I'd feel much more secure with some distance between you and that drop."

You did not budge. Loki sighed, but it wasn't his usual over-the-top weight-of-the-world-on-his-shoulders kind of sigh. Very deliberately, he loosened his grip on you and dropped your hand. Then he sat down in your previous position with his boots hanging into the void.

"Very well. We'll do things your way. Will you please sit with me for a while?"

Your arms—which you'd wrapped tightly around yourself when freed—relaxed somewhat. But still you made no move to join him.

Now he rolled his eyes. Afterward, he lifted his right hand in the air and kept the left fully visible to you and said solemnly: "I swear by all the gods in Asgard, Jotunheim, and Midgard that I will do nothing to force you to comply with my requests. I only want to speak with you."

Now that your determination had been so rudely interrupted, the whipping wind at this height had you shivering. You took a seat beside him hesitantly all the same. Better that, you figured, than to shake yourself right off the platform.

"I think you said everything you needed to say earlier," you said.

Rather than respond, Loki unclasped his cloak. The warm weight of it settled over your shoulders before he said anything else.

"I'm sorry," he said at last. "I was...No. I am scared of dying."

Your fingers twisted around the edge of the cape to draw it closer around you. Despite the gale and the cold, the herbal scent you'd come to associate with Loki himself remained stuck to the fabric.

Loki's laughed humorlessly into the sky. "Pathetic, isn't it? I would do anything to escape the death that is my birthright. You would offer yourself in exchange for what you believe to be a lie."

"It is a lie," you said.

"But it isn't!" Now he turned to you. "Everything you've experienced here has been real, and everything you remember from before is real, too."

"So why did you try to convince me it wasn't?"

"I thought if we both could believe in the truth of this place, it would—what is the Midgardian saying?—seal the deal. That I could be saved. I see now that I was wrong."

"Too bad it took you so long to realize that," you said. "Maybe if you'd admitted everything months ago, Tony and Bruce would have had time to get the real Cinnabar back, and we wouldn't be in this mess."

"[Name], there is no 'real' Cinnabar. The only Cinnabar there's ever been is you."

"You just told me that all of this," you waved one hand wildly around your head, "is real!"

"It is! A wish become reality is still reality."

You stood with enough force to send Loki's cape billowing off your body. The wind soon whisked it away. "Then all of this is my fault, and I have to make it right."

Loki got to his feet as well. "Your fault? Whatever are you talking about?"

"'A wish become reality is still reality.' My wish became reality! I wished to be less lonely, and I woke up here. If I had never done that, everyone here would be safe. They'd never have known me. Thanos wouldn't have a shortcut to the stones. I—"

He silenced you with a hand softly cupping your face. "I wished to have lived a better life. As I lay dying on the Statesman, while in close proximity to several Infinity Stones, I wished to have done more, been more, loved more. [Name], you were the answer to my wish."

What possible reply could you give to that other than, "What?"

"So I am certain that you can understand," he went on, "that I cannot allow you to make this senseless sacrifice on my behalf. I cannot let you die on the altar of my selfishness."

"I can't stay, Loki. If Thanos gets ahold of me, he'll kill half the universe before you all can do anything to rescue it."

"I know. That is why while you were off having your fruitless work meeting with the rest of the Avengers, I was calling in a few favors to get my hands on this."

He held up the same satchel he'd once carried the photograph of your family in. Carefully, he opened the top of it. A thin current of blood-red liquid surged from the top like a tiny geyser before he sealed it shut once more. You could hardly believe your eyes.

"Is that the Aether?" you asked.

One end of his lips curled at your obvious wonder. "The Tesseract would never have gotten you home. You traveled realities, not distance."

"But it's not in stone form. How are you going to get it to do anything?"

"All I plan to do is undo my wish. I don't see that putting it in a stronger form will make the object more or less likely to bow to my whim, seeing as I never made my wish directly on it to begin with. It's just a sort of focusing instrument with fantastical powers beyond your imagination."

“So because it’s magic, you don’t have to explain it?”

“I’m so glad you understand. We really make an incredible team, you and I. It’s as though our souls were cut from the same cloth.” His winning smile faded slowly away. “I didn’t lie about everything, you know. I really do love you.”

“Because this universe forced you to love me,” you said.

“No. The love came later. Watching you, talking to you, sharing my fears with you, I found myself inexorably drawn to everything about you. You truly are a lovable creature, [F Name] [L Name]."

Could you believe him? You wanted to. Which didn't make a lick of sense, seeing as if you had just had an argument with a normal man back home, you wouldn't be so quick to put your guard down—but here you were, able and ready to do so for a self-professed god of mischief! Before you could give more thought to the question of trust, he added:

"And that is why I have to let you go."

Red liquid gushed now from the top of the satchel in his grasp. It swirled round and round and round your body, dousing the whole scene in a deep, dark scarlet. You could barely see Loki even though he remained mere inches from you.

"Wait! Come with me. You'll be safe there," you said.

"I rather think I've broken your heart enough to make up for multiple worlds by now."

"But just because I'm gone won't mean Thanos isn't going to come!"

"I know. But you'll be safe. And that is something I have come to realize I am willing to die for."

Your field of vision had shrunk to the point that all you could see of Loki were his eyes, two shiny, all-black spheres shining at you through the reddish-dark. The noise of the traffic and the wind had diminished.

"If there is a universe where I exist and you do not, and there is a universe where you exist and I do not," he said, "then surely somewhere there is a universe where we both exist. I will look for you there. I love you, [Name]."

Everything went black. The sound of a rushing river filled your ears. No wind stirred your clothing. It felt as though slick, opaque walls were pressing in on you from every angle. You tried to speak, but your tongue would not move, nor would any other part of your body. Only one thing remained to make clear:

'I love you, too.'

******

The sharp blare of your alarm cut through the thick darkness like a knife. Groaning, you thrust one arm from your warm cocoon of blankets and groped about until you found your cell phone. Only after you'd silenced the din did you sit up enough to expose yourself to the chill of the world beyond your bed.

Half a yawn later, realization struck. Your bed. You turned your head to one side to see the dust-coated blinds. Your room. You pulled the fabric covering your chest out so that you could give it a thorough examination. Your pajamas.

All traces of sleepiness vanished. One small leap had you out of bed with your feet on the floor. You rushed out into the rest of your tiny, one-bedroom apartment. Just outside your bedroom sat your crammed living-slash-dining room. Nearby was the kitchen, filled with feeble pre-work-shift sunlight drifting through the skylight, and—yes!—a pile of dirty plates rising from the sink. A calendar was pinned where you could not miss it; its pages were still open to December of the previous year.

Previous year?!

You clapped a hand over your own mouth to keep the weak laughter from burbling out of your throat and disturbing your neighbors. Just as quickly as you'd been filled with energy, you lost the strength to stand upright. The open bedroom door served to hold you up as you slowly slid to the floor, pulled your legs up to your chest, and buried your face in your knees.

Just a dream. It had only been a vivid, wild, exceptionally lengthy dream—one you could never share with anyone else. Anyone hearing the details of your fantastical Avengers life would surely remind you to stop reading on Ao3 at least an hour before bed. No, you'd just have to keep this secret to the grave.

Curious, you lifted your head and shifted to look at one forearm. You concentrated with all your might on the emotions you'd felt in that dream: anger, fear, anxiety, love, courage. Nothing happened. Even attempting to trigger yourself into a panic attack resulted in no change whatsoever.

Your phone chimed with a reminder that you'd better stop living in dreamland if you wanted to keep your job. Here in the real world, you still had rent to pay, so up you got. You finished your morning routine with picking up a to-go breakfast from the kitchen. Then you grabbed your keys and your purse and made to leave.

You saw it just before you stepped outside: Your corkboard plastered with memories. An enormous grin spread across your face as you locked the door behind you.

In one familiar photograph of your family, someone nearly hidden in the background had the wrong-colored eyes.

THE END

Final Author's Note:

Hey, thanks for joining me for this little surprise adventure. As I said previously, this was originally intended to be a one shot that just had the penultimate scene until I realized it really wouldn't have any emotional payoff unless I built up to it. The pacing is a little wonky, but, hey, I think this is the best paced multi-chapter fic I've written. And it gave me an opportunity to try some things, like writing action scenes (those always ground my progress to a halt) and trying to keep the romance ever-present even when Loki wasn't physically in a scene. I hope that I succeeded to some small degree in my goals. I've been studying plot pacing a lot recently, so I hope my next attempt (which through a poll on Tumblr will be Blossoms in the Snow) will show improvement.

As always, I have to give a huge shout-out to my IRL friend, R. Thank you for always being a text away from answering my bizarre questions such as, "Is it racist to say someone tastes like MSG after they eat Chinese food?" or helping me figure out an appropriate onomatopoeia; for almost always knowing what word I'm looking for when I describe it to you; and for enduring the all-important "bitching step" of my writing process and listening to me moan about how words like "herbaceous" don't mean what I want them to and English is a stupid language. Even after all these years, you complete me. You don't often read my fic, so it's unlikely you'll see this, but if you ever do: I love you, and I think you're pretty swell.

Neither Proxima Midnight nor Corvus Glaive were inclined to talk once they'd forced their way through Tony's launchpad and into the building. To be fair, after one look at the cruel smirk on the former's face and the way the latter drummed his fingers excitedly against the length of his glaive, you didn't find the idea of conversation to have much appeal either. They were each tall, bony, and horned, and you were all alone and completely unprepared for a fight against one abductor, let alone two.

And so the struggle commenced with you waging an internal battle over what would upset Tony more when he got back: Injury to you or injury to one of the more expensive bottles of liquor on his only recently-repaired bar shelves.

"JARVIS, do we have an ETA on Clint yet or what?" you shouted from behind the very temporary shelter of an overturned table.

JARVIS didn't answer.

Shit. Had they somehow disabled JARVIS? With that kind of technology, what else could they do? Your attempt to think of any other way to contact a member of the team for help got interrupted by one of your opponents kicking the table away, exposing you. You lifted your arms in a weak display of self-defense. Proxima let out a low chuckle.

"You think to fight us off with your pathetic toxins?" she asked. "All we must do is stay out of reach of your slimy Terran hands."

"Something very easy for us to accomplish," Corvus said.

God. Oh, God. Their weapons were much longer than your arms, and looked very sharp to boot. The blades grew closer as you backed away—until your back pressed against a wall.

"How sad it is to see that no one is coming for you this time, not even the backstabbing Asgardian," said Proxima.

"Not so much of a danger on your own, are you?" Her partner stopped the very tip of his glaive less than an inch from your throat. The place where Gamora had nicked you all those months ago stung in anticipation. "Why don't you just give us what we want and save your friends from having to clean up much of your blood?"

There was nowhere else to go. In the short amount of time since their arrival, everything you'd done to try to get some space between yourself and those two had resulted in nothing more than turning Tony's bar upside down. You could keep running, but not much else. And even if you ran to another spot in the tower, the place was empty. Of the usual team, just Clint remained—and you didn't seem to have any way to get his help outside of physically going straight to him.

"Okay," you said quickly.

Proxima's red eyes narrowed. "What?"

"I said, 'Okay.' You're right. I'm too weak to take you both on at the same time. So I'll give you the locations of the Infinity Stones."

The Vibranium at your neck didn't move an inch. "How do we know that you're telling us the truth?" asked Corvus.

"You don't. I could be lying. For all you know, I don't have any clue where a single Infinity Stone is. But what do I have to gain by tricking you? A longer, more tortuous death?"

The pair glanced at one another.

"A trap?" she suggested.

"Most likely," he said.

"Oh, sure. A specially-made trap for two aliens no one on this entire planet has even heard of before. We humans are definitely smart enough to put together something like that." Feeling that you might be laying it on a little thick, you paused—then decided to dive in headfirst. You grasped the shaft of the glaive in both of your hands and pulled it even closer to your skin. "I'll fight you until I die, which, by all accounts, won't take very long. So what would Daddy prefer? Murder the one potential map you have to what he wants more than anything, or play along to see if I'm lying? And if I am lying, he probably won't care much if Loki finds my bloodless corpse with your signatures on it."

Corvus grit his teeth, which did nothing to lessen his resemblance to the grim reaper. You prayed that neither of them would turn out to have some sort of innate ability to sense fear or deception. A swift but silent conversation took place between them that used nothing but their locked eyes. At last, he snarled and yanked his weapon from your grip.

You took this to be the signal that they agreed to play along for now. Every molecule in your body that hadn't sagged with relief over not having a blade at your throat anymore did so now. This required you to pull all your resolve together merely to peel yourself off the wall. With that done, you motioned for the pair to follow you out of the room.

"And where is it you think to lead us?" asked Proxima.

"The garage. It's only the other place that will work. You guys wrecked the launchpad."

Your trio left the ruined bar to enter the contrastingly pristine hallway. The walls here remained intact; the floor, clean and glistening. Daylight spilled inside from the windows at the far end of the hall—but no sign of incoming calvary. If JARVIS had been completely disabled, he wouldn't have been able to contact anyone outside the building for help either. You hadn't thought of that. Cold sweat gathered at the nape of your neck, but you had to keep pretending because your life depended on it.

The elevator doors opened without a sound shortly after you pushed the call button. Just as you made to step inside, something sharp and hot smacked the back of your calves. You tripped forward and fell to the ground, barely managing to catch yourself before your face smashed into the floor. By the time you stood, Proxima and Corvus had sauntered into the lift with you. The former looked all too pleased with herself for getting away with what amounted to an act of petty mischief.

You kept your eyes glued to the numbers above the door as the elevator descended toward the basement. Every ounce of your brainpower was focused on one thing and one thing alone. What everything hinged on now you'd only done once before to your knowledge—and you couldn't afford to lose your head like you had done then.

"You do realize," Corvus said in a conversational tone, without bothering to shift his gaze to you, "we will still kill you, even if we do get what want."

"I kind of gathered that much." Your voice shook, but nothing else did. Baby steps. You needed to take baby steps. Then you could get through this in approximately one piece.

Unfortunately, the ride to the garage didn't take nearly as long as you wanted. Both your captors remained upright and coherent. Now you no longer had them in a confined space. Proxima wobbled, though, as she exited ahead of you. You didn't let that go to your head. Her near-stagger could have just as easily been due to the slight heels on the bottoms of her sabatons.

They prowled forward, necks craning so that they could see in the relative gloom. No glass to show off the sky here. Only ceiling lights installed at regular intervals dispelled any of the shadows at all. This had the effect of making the looming shapes of Tony's covered cars appear like strange, humpbacked ghosts. Corvus paused by one of these to delicately lift a corner of fabric.

"Who would keep one of the Infinity Stones in such a place? Housed together with such—" He sniffed and dropped the cover back over Tony's Acura—"primitive methods of transportation."

"Eyes on the floor, please!" They both whipped around to glower at you. "The stone isn't here. We're looking for the gate to where it actually is."

They stared at you like they had never heard such a stupid remark. You swallowed and resumed your search. Given the faint glitter on the white fabric, there had to be a set of Bifrost runes burned in here somewhere. Heimdall wasn't likely to actually open the Bifrost if you asked, but you didn't feel the need to share that information with the other two. It wouldn't be long before they figured it out anyway. Tony's garage was only so big; most of his collection remained out in California where it was much less likely to encounter Thor or the Hulk.

"What is the matter with you, Proxima?" you heard Corvus ask.

You stopped watching your feet in time to see her spear clatter to the floor. Corvus rushed up to her as she woozily held a glove hand to her forehead.

"I do not know!" She ground the words out between gritted teeth. "My head is pounding. The room is spinning. I fear I might take ill at any moment."

Slowly, trying not to attract any attention whatsoever, you backed away. Corvus aided his wife gently to the hood of one Tony's cars. You winced and hoped it was the least expensive of those in New York. Still you did not stop your backward movement. It had not escaped you that Corvus kept a firm grip on his glaive with his free hand.

"My stomach is also in knots." A nasty pause followed his pronouncement. "When did your symptoms start?"

Now your stomach was in knots. You moved faster, glancing behind you to avoid tripping over a latent mousetrap.

"They began when we stepped inside the..."

She trailed away. Their heads snapped in your direction in eerie unison. The fallen spear sailed into Proxima's hands, and every sign of illness evaporated from her as she stood tall, her face a mask of fury.

"You!" she screamed.

"Can't blame a girl for trying to even the playing field," you said.

Here it came: the physical alteration you'd so wanted to avoid. Too bad you'd only managed to bring it into the garage. Tony might have actually preferred his alcohol bottles getting smashed over his collector cars.

Proxima opened proceedings by firing multiple blasts from her spear. These you dodged easily. Your toxin really had her off her A game—well, as long as you weren't an Audi R8. Corvus seemed less affected. He rushed forward only to seize violently, then fall motionless at your toes.

Well, that didn't seem likely.

Before you could wonder more how he'd gone down without you lifting a finger, something else in the room made a thud noise. You spotted Proxima hit the floor out of the corner of your eye. A double take revealed why.

"Loki?" you gasped.

And indeed, there he was, albeit in more casual garb than you'd ever seen him wear to battle before. He didn't even have his helmet. You raced over for him to wrap one arm around your waist. His other kept his spear pointed directly at the motionless figure below.

"I don't understand. I thought you were on Asgard."

"I called him."

Clint now crouched over Corvus to clap SHIELD-issue cuffs around his wrists. Jutting out from Corvus’ back, just above his bound hands, was one of Clint's signature taser arrows.

"Thank you," you said.

He wouldn't meet your eyes, but you hoped he heard the sincerity in your voice all the same. Clint simply shrugged, stood, and shoved his way around you and Loki to similarly incapacitate Proxima.

"But I asked JARVIS if you were coming. He wouldn't answer me."

"We thought giving you a strict deadline might also ruin the advantage of surprise." Now that he had both hands free, Loki had them on your face, moving your head in different angles to check for injuries. "You did very well distracting them until help arrived."

"Just like what the old [Name] would have done," Clint agreed. But he kept his gaze affixed to the opposite side of the room.

Remembering your promise to not force Clint into spending more time in your boyfriend's presence than necessary, you swatted Loki's probing fingers away and went to help Clint lug a slumped-over Proxima upright.

"Let's get out of here before any lingering gas gives Hawkeye a headache, too," you said.

"I certainly hope it doesn't do any damage to Stark's precious cars either. We'll never hear the end of it," Loki said.

The curse you let out had nothing to do with how heavy Proxima was, nor how quickly you dropped her once Clint let her go.

******

The mood permeating the tower the following evening could only be described as celebratory. No one got assigned cooking that day. Instead, Tony shelled out for an assortment of the best Chinese takeout New York City had to offer. Team members milled around the dining room and kitchen, where boxes and platters of fried rice, orange chicken, crab Rangoon, soup dumplings, and more covered the surfaces of the table and counters. Even Clint had joined the festivities, although he vigilantly kept a wide berth between himself and Loki.

You sat at the table with the largest group: Loki, Thor, Steve, Sam, and Tony. Eating had become a sort of free-for-all, and this positioning gave you the best opportunity to snag highly-desired morsels and listen to everyone talk.

"Just because we've got two more of them in jail on Asgard doesn't mean there aren't more to come." Of course, Steve would know how to expertly use chopsticks to slurp up a Lo Mein noodle. He could do everything expertly. "And there's still the question of how we're supposed to ensure they all get a fair trial. We can't detain them like that indefinitely. They have rights."

"Thanks for that input, Bill on Capitol Hill," said Tony. The ice in his glass of Chinese 75 clinked as he took a sip. And lucky for him, Pepper was too immersed in conversation with Natasha and Rhodey over by the fridge to overhear the conversation, or she and Steve would have turned the entire night into a debate, and you didn’t foresee it being one Tony could win. "Anyway, you're missing the point. We're not celebrating finishing our punch card for defeating alien mercenaries."

Sam, delicately nibbling on an egg roll, asked, "Then what are we celebrating?"

"The fact that [Name] only broke two of my liquor bottles and only melted some paint off of my Cobra."

"And," Loki picked your hand off the table where it rested, "[Name] getting back to her usual self."

You felt yourself blush at the praise. "I really didn't do anything but avoid getting abducted."

"But you did it all by yourself," said Loki proudly.

"And, again, with a minimum amount of damage to my things," Tony said.

"A toast!" Thor stood abruptly. Foam sloshed from the top of his enormous tankard. "To [Name]'s return!"

"To [Name]'s return!" The whole room echoed—even Bruce and Clint, who had been huddled together in a corner looking somewhat socially anxious.

You buried your face in your own glass. Despite this embarrassment, you felt an altogether different kind of warmth as well. Everything you remembered said clearly that you didn't belong here. Your existence was parasitic, sucking the love from the life someone else had built. But over the last few weeks, you'd thought about your old life and the original [Name]'s less and less. Now, surrounded by people who had once been mere figments of many imaginations cheering your most minor accomplishments, you thought you were doing something you hadn't since the crash that took your family: Belonging.

Thor sat down with a loud laugh and yet another hard clap on your back. Now you knew to brace for this. Once Loki finished chastising his brother for his careless disregard for the strength of your very-mortal bones, Loki looped one arm around you. You leaned in close, tuning out Steve, Sam, and Tony's renewed argument over whether or not assassins from across the galaxy who weren't even human had constitutional rights. Natasha winked at you from between Rhodey and Pepper. Clint, still shieled somewhat by Bruce, lifted his cup in silent acknowledgement when your eyes met.

Returning to the flow of conversation around you, you shifted your head to a more comfortable spot on Loki's shoulder and let the perfection of the evening sweep over you.

Things continued on in this vein for the rest of the day and long into the night. Groups mixed and broke apart as the time passed. The sun dipped lower and lower until it disappeared and the sky outside turned indigo. One by one, Avengers members with assignments the next day (or, in Steve's case, a grandpa-like bedtime) took their leave. Your own head bobbed once or twice when you attempted to suppress a yawn. Rhodey and Tony had began a game of one-upmanship in front of their rapidly dwindling audience, and you didn't know how long you yourself could remain upright for that.

Something nudged your arm.

"Loki?" you asked somewhat groggily.

He held one long finger to his lips and helped you up.

"Are we going to bed?" you asked. The idea occurred to you of begging him to carry you there. Then again, you'd probably been treated like a princess enough for one day. No need to press your luck.

"Soon," he promised. "I want to go somewhere more private first."

What could be more private than your own shared bed? Curious, you followed him to the elevator. Loki pressed a button for whatever floor he wanted to take you to rather than ask JARVIS aloud. You were too sleepy to try to sneak a peek.

The doors opened up to the bar. Already the equipment and supplies needed to patch up the destruction left by your brief skirmish with Proxima and Corvus had been piled up throughout the room. A string of "Caution Do Not Enter Tape" hung half-heartedly across the walkway from the lift to sitting room. Loki ignored this and strode right through it.

"I don't think we're supposed to go in here until the repairs are done," you said.

Loki dismissed your concerns with a flick of his wrist. "It's not as though the structural integrity of the place is at risk. Besides, these windows have the best view in the tower, and I'm sick to death of Stark hogging it."

Well, he was right about the bit where the bar had the best view. You cautiously picked your way through the dim light around the skeletal remains of broken furniture and chunks of wall until you reached Loki's side. And indeed the view was magnificent. You let out a sigh with obvious wonder in it as you came to a stop.

The amount of light pollution meant that you couldn't see many stars. Still, the scenery laid out before you was breathtaking—what you could see of it, that was. A warped reflection of Loki's pale face took up most of the glass. You stood there next to him without either of you saying a word for several minutes.

"I just wanted to say that I'm glad," Loki said at last.

"For what?"

"That you chose to stay. I wasn't certain that you would at first."

You cocked your head to one side and regarded the blurry copy of him. "Do you mean when we first met, or when I woke up screaming in the bed?"

One end of his mouth twisted upward. "Both, I suppose. You've had two opportunities now to leave me. And still you haven't."

The unasked question lingered between you: Why?

You watched yourself chew on the answer. Never far away from your mind was the fear of hurting him. But time had passed. You'd learned that emotionally wounding Loki took a lot more than you thought. As you'd forgiven him for his past misdeeds, so he would be likely to forgive your slips of tongue. Any pain you caused now would be momentary.

Exhaling slowly, you turned your whole body to face him. "I still don't know that all of this is real for me."

He took one of your hands and softly pressed it to his chest. You could feel the steady drum of his heart beneath the comically large shirt that he had stolen out of Steve's laundry the week before. "Does this not feel real to you?"

Though you tried to pull your hand back, you did not try very hard. "Okay. The world itself is real. You're real. What if I'm not? What if I'm not the [Name] that you knew and remember?"

"What if you are?"

"Then what if I never remember anything from before?"

Loki leaned in until his lips were mere centimeters from your own. His eyes roved from your mouth to your eyes and back again. "Do you love me?"

The word no caught on the tip of your tongue. You couldn't say it. All the memories you'd made since waking up in a cosplayer's bed flooded through your mind: Loki patient, Loki caring, Loki kind—never pushing, never punishing, only ever looking at you with something akin to hope. Every one of the Avengers had told you, in one way or another, that he loved you. Standing there just then, knowing it was nonsensical, knowing it was overdramatic, knowing as you had right from the start that it was pathetic, you believed that he loved you.

And the truth came tumbling out: "I do love you."

He didn't kiss you. He pressed his cool forehead against yours. "And I love you. No matter what you ever remember—or don't—that is enough for me."

You took the initiative. Your feet arched on to your toes so you stood just tall enough to bridge the gap between your lips and his to kiss him. The connection lingered this time. Loki tasted like winter air before snow with a hint of MSG. He placed one palm against your neck; your fingers curled into the fabric of his ridiculous top. When you broke apart, even he looked winded.

"Bed now?" he asked after a brief pause.

"Carry me?"

You'd only just lifted your arms into the air to beg when he swept you into the air. "Anything for you, princess," he said in a falsely aggrieved tone.

Well, what was the point in catching a ride all the way out here in the middle of the night only to chicken out when you got there? This would not be the first time you ate crow, nor did you suspect it would be last. You tried not to anticipate the taste too much as you took a deep breath and forced yourself to face the shadowed entrance to the offices of Nelson & Murdock.

You wavered for a moment with your arm outstretched, hand nearly grasping the bar across the door. Yes, it was dark inside. Not a single light on in the entire building as far as you could tell. And why should you think anyone would be here at 2:00 in the morning? Just because you'd been stuck at your office this late didn't mean the same for everyone else working the case.

No. No excuses. You'd just steeled your resolved to press forward when you heard a commotion above your head: the clang of something hitting metal, followed by rapid footsteps. You grabbed at once for the canister of pepper spray in your purse, but when you looked in the direction of the sound, you saw nothing that might have caused it.

Probably just a stray cat.

This time, you really did force yourself to push on the door. It opened easily. Damn. Now you had to go through with this, or at least check for signs of a break-in—not that you were likely to see any in the pitch-black you now stood in.

Your call of "Hello?" broke in two after its first syllable, interrupted by a series of thumps issuing from the ceiling.

What it was was absolutely too big to be a cat.

You should have called the police. Obviously! What could you do to stop someone with the balls to rob a defense attorney's office? Your pepper spray wouldn't do a thing to stop someone like that. But your feet took you up the stairs before you could reach for your cell phone instead. Somehow, someway, you managed to bound all the way up the incline without tripping on something in the unfamiliar territory.

There. The nearest door. You could hear beyond it. With as much force as you could muster, you slammed the door open. At least if you could startle the intruder, that would give you the chance to —

"Counselor. What an unexpected surprise."

—the chance to look like a complete buffoon. Matt Murdock sat at Matt Murdock's desk in Matt Murdock's office, looking entirely unruffled in the light coming from the window behind him. Well, maybe not entirely unruffled. It looked as though he had hat hair, although your jobs being what they were, you'd never actually seen him wear a hat.

You must have waited too long to speak, because Matt cocked his head slightly to one side and asked, "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Uh," you said, in a desperate bid for time. But the second it took you to say that didn't give you any grand ideas for answers. "I was in the neighborhood."

"This neighborhood? Really?"

How did this man always manage to sound so polite and so condescending at the same damn time? You stalked up to his desk and slammed your palms into its surface. Matt didn't even flinch. "Listen, Murdock. I was nearby, I heard something up here, and I rushed in to help at risk of my life. And this is the thanks I get?"

"I take it by your attitude that you were not 'nearby' to offer apologies for your earlier conduct," he observed in that same infuriatingly mild tone.

"What I was nearby for isn't the point!"

"On the contrary, Counselor. I think what you're doing breaking into my office when you didn't believe anyone would be here is the point."

"I—" You bristled, cutting yourself off as you realized Matt had you dead to rights. After your performance that morning, people weren't likely to believe you had good intentions being where you were when you were. You wouldn't believe it, had the roles been reversed. So you forced yourself to inhale slowly and step away from his desk.

"I only lied about why I was here. I did come to see you. But I didn't break in. The door was unlocked."

"And you decided to keep going even though all the lights were turned off."

"I told you I heard something up here!"

There was just something about Matt's demeanor that pushed all your buttons, and you weren't known for your even temper to begin with. Then it dawned on you:

"And you are here. Why are you here sitting in the dark?"

One corner of Matt's lips twitched up. "Well, it isn't as though I need a lamp. It keeps the bills down, which in turn keeps Foggy's blood pressure down."

"Do you often say here in a completely dark building so late after closing?"

"No. Our discussion today raised some questions for me. After all this time, I'd hate to see my client in chains over a technicality." He tapped on the thick, hard cover of a tome sitting closed in front of him. "And you're lucky I did tonight and that I have no plans to press charges."

"And if you did, I'd never try to prevent someone from stealing from you again."

"I'll be more careful to lock the door when I'm here alone late. At any rate, I'm afraid all you heard was my fumbling through my case files. I'm sorry for causing you concern."

"Are you sure? I swear I heard someone on the fire escape before I came in."

"Must have been a stray cat," he said as he moved to switch on his desk lamp. Doing so could only be for your benefit. You took the hint and collapsed into the chair across from him. God, even just talking to this man made you tired. "Not that I don't appreciate a purely social call from a person of your caliber, but I do have a lot of reading to do before I file in the morning. Why don't you just tell me what brought you here to begin with," he said.

Your hackles raised automatically. It took some willpower to lower them—willpower and a reminder that you'd already admitted to wanting to see him. The fight left you as you sighed.

"I came to say...I'm sorry," you said.

A long paused followed your statement. Matt appeared frozen in place. "Excuse me?"

A spark of frustration seared inside your chest, but you stifled it before it could grow. You'd spent most of the day consumed by that fire. Time to let it go.

"I'm sorry for my behavior in court this morning. The judge should have held me in contempt. I was out of line."

There was more, and Matt must have known that. He said nothing while you mentally prepared to continue.

"We've both been on this case for a long time. It's been my life for months now. And the suggestion we might be on the wrong track..."

"Stung?" Matt offered pleasantly.

"It's ludicrous! My investigator couldn't be that wrong. All my witnesses can't be lying. The evidence leads us directly to your client. But..."

Matt's eyebrows folded into one long line above the frames of his glasses. "But?"

"You were right," you said softly. "Maybe I've been living this too long. Maybe I want this to be over more than I want the truth."

It was a difficult thing to admit. The implications of doing so would have far-reaching consequences. But as long as you said it out loud, one of those consequences wouldn't have to be losing your soul in the slow-grinding wheels of justice.

"Thank you for saying that," Matt said, and oh no. You recognized that note in his voice. If you let him go on in it, you'd regret it. "I—"

"Which is why tomorrow I'm going to request to be withdrawn from the case."

"What?"

"It'll be better for everyone involved. We can get some fresh eyes on it, let someone new take a look."

"You getting taken off the case is the last thing I wanted."

"Why? It's not as though you've invoked your right to a speedy trial."

"You know the case. You know my client is innocent!"

"I don't know that, Matt!"

"But you admit it's a possibility."

Your hesitation to disagree answered for you. Matt half-rose from behind his desk, leaning across it to whisper, "Don't you want to know? Don't you want to find out why they've all been lying to you?"

You shook your head. "I think all I really want is to be done."

The unasked question of done with what? rang in the air. An unexpected lump in your throat made it impossible for you to speak. Then Matt opened a drawer, and the sudden noise of it made you jump in your seat.

"You know what we both need?" That strangely impish smile of his had returned.

"A straitjacket and a white room?"

"A break." He stood with his briefcase in his hand. "You said it yourself. We've been working this case a long time. A few hours of time to ourselves won't ruin it."

You nodded again as you dragged yourself up out of his chair. That was all you had the energy for. "I'll get out of your hair. I should probably try to get some sleep before I talk to my boss anyway."

A faint touch on your elbow kept you from moving very far. When you glanced back, you found Matt's hand grasping you there. "Come with me," he said.

Great. Now you'd been mulling things over so much you were hallucinating. You jab about the straitjackets sharpened into a nearing reality. In an effort to save the miniscule amount of dignity remaining to you, you laughed a little hysterically during your attempt to shake him off.

"I'm not going to your house with you, Murdock."

"You wound me, Counselor. What sort of cad do you take me for?"

"Then what are you suggesting?"

"The bars are still open for another or so. Let me buy you a drink. We can talk."

You recoiled far enough to get his arm to drop. "And what will people think of us out colluding in public?"

Matt shrugged. "We won't talk about the case, so we won't be colluding."

"We can claim that all we want. The judge will be concerned with what the witness thinks they saw."

"If someone accuses us of colluding, what's the big deal?" Here, he looked over his red lenses directly into your eyes; you felt goosebumps prickle up your arms at the feeling Matt could actually see you. "You're already talking about stepping back. I happen to know a defense firm that might be interested in someone of your talents if you get forced out."

He shifted his cane and his case to offer you his arm in silence, the obvious ghost of a smile pulling at his lips. You paused. His offer sounded good—better than it should have, considering all your bombastic meetings in court up until then. Then, before you could change your mind, you bent over to switch off Matt's lamp. Your arms hooked together, and his smile widened before he tugged you gently in the direction of the exit.

"I'm surprised you actually bothered coming," he said without looking up from his work.

"Was I not supposed to?" you asked.

Clint shrugged. "Natasha's busy with Steve today. Something big came up in D.C., apparently."

"And they didn't call you in for backup?"

"Didn't need me. Didn't figure you would either." He added something in a mutter that sounded an awful lot like, "Getting pretty damn used to not being needed."

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

You wondered if his obvious funk had anything to do with the call from Bobbi's SHIELD cell that morning—a good guess, now you thought of it, given Steve and Natasha's whereabouts. But asking Clint directly would be out of the question. He could bring up his ex-wife; everyone else had to pretend she didn't exist. Her weekly calls to "check on" him made doing so tactfully difficult.

Didn't you owe it to Clint to try, though? You plunked yourself down on the hard floor next to him as he went back to fidgeting with his arrows. Perhaps he just needed some company. Your presence, however, brought forth no more conversation on his end. JARVIS practically buzzed audibly in every inch of the walls surrounding you both.

"Clint, what's the matter?" you finally asked. Not a bad job, either. You'd implied nothing about Bobbi at all!

But his jaw tightened, and he said, "Nothing," again.

"Something."

"I don't want to talk about it or anything else with you."

"Okay." You dragged the word out at the same pace you dragged yourself back to standing. "If you don't want to talk to me, how about beating me up a little? I still have a long way to go relearning how to think up wisecracks while being shot at."

That got his attention enough for him to look you up and down. "You didn't expect a training session with just me, did you?"

Seeing as how you'd had no idea that Steve and Natasha were quite possibly out starting the events of The Winter Soldier until Clint relayed the information to you a few minutes ago, the answer was a resounding no. But you didn't think that was the right answer at the moment.

"Why not? Tasha's not the only one with appreciable skills around here."

His eyes slid around you like water around rocks. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" you asked, genuinely confused.

"Pity me. I don't need that."

Your mouth opened to unleash a protest before snapping shut having argued nothing at all. If Clint didn't need pity just then, he didn't need lied to either. Any insistence that the pity came from a place of genuine concern would make things about you—and you were not the injured party here. So you kept silent, though you didn't make any move to leave the area either.

After a moment or two of less-than-companiable silence, Clint dropped the arrow he'd been working on. It clattered to the floor. Then he lifted his free hand to scrape aggressively at the back of his head. When he spoke, his voice was raw:

"You don't need me. No one here needs me. Not Natasha, not Bobbi, not the team."

He left a natural lull for you to interject but I do need you. You didn't. You respected him too much to try to assuage him with falsehoods. Even if it had been the truth, he wouldn't be able to see that in his current mood. The two of you weren't exactly close to begin with; hell, outside of training sessions and meals, you hardly saw the man at all. 

"Well," you tried for a self-depreciating smile, "I'm no one you need to need you, right?"

He scoffed. Not a denial.

"But you don't believe Natasha doesn't need you. Do you?"

The fact that she hadn't invited Clint to act as backup on a SHIELD-centric misadventure loomed ominously between you. Its shadow had you swiftly backtracking.

"H-hey! I mean, sure, she didn't ask you to join her today, but there's other ways to need someone. You're her best friend!"

"Am I?" His self-depreciating smile blew yours out of the water.

"You think I'm replacing you? Is this because of the slumber party? Because she told me you just wanted to see the natural color of your fingernails for a little while!"

"Forget I said anything." He sounded faintly disgusted.

"I will not."

"You don't want to hear it."

"Tony tells me things I don't want to hear on a daily basis."

"I mean it. You won't like it."

"Try me."

"You really care that much?"

"For God's sake, Clint, just spit it out!"

"Everything is Loki's fault."

Your mouth fell open. Loki had been the farthest thing from your mind since entering this room. All you could think to say was: "Huh?"

"See?" Clint shook his head at your astonishment, clearly mistaking it for being offended. "Everyone else around here's already prepared to hunker down around the campfire and sing kumbaya with the guy. What's it matter if I'm the one person who's not?"

Without waiting for you to answer, he plucked his discarded arrow off the ground and began to gather the rest of his things. Clint clearly intended to make a fast exit. You knew you needed to come up with an equally fast reply. But called upon to make a choice at lightning speed, your brain failed you, and what came out of your mouth (to make room for the inevitable foot) was:

"I think it matters a lot."

He rounded on you, obviously furious. Clint's shade of red wasn't nearly as endearing as Bruce's had been. You felt your hands and feet go numb from a combination of horror, mortification, and (probably) poison. This sensation made for an interesting juxtaposition with your suddenly burning face.

"You really think," his voice quivered slightly, "that everyone liking your sainted boyfriend is the most important thing in the whole world?"

"Clint, I—"

"My whole life is falling apart. It has been since the invasion. Can't anybody see that? I've lost everything! He got in my head for a few days, and I became a completely different person. What if I'm still not me? That's what Bobbi thought—or thinks."

His speech grew more rapid. The anger faded. In its place grew a cold terror you couldn't begin to fathom. A chill seemed to rush out of Clint's very person, and you could do nothing but helplessly sit back on the floor while he worked himself up into further lather.

"I killed people. I'd never killed one person before that. And what's more, he made me not care. I didn't feel anything. What if the only reason I feel something now is because he's let me?"

Soon he would reach his breaking point. Could either of you handle that? Clint didn't know you well enough to not regret crying in front of you if you let him.

"I'm supposed to be the good guy, right? The hero? Heroes are supposed to forgive. I'm supposed to forgive him. But I can't. So maybe I'm not a hero at all."

You heard a tightness in his throat that heralded a storm of tears. It was now or never. Grabbing his wrist reminded Clint you remained there, and he shuddered to a halt long enough for you to speak:

"I'm sorry."

His face with slack with surprise, so you went on:

"When I said it mattered that you're the one person who doesn't want to sing kumbaya with him, I didn't mean that you had to forgive him. I mean that seeing everyone else forgive him must really suck. I worded it badly. I'm sorry."

The limb in your grip trembled. "Y-yeah."

"He unmade you, Clint. Nobody else on the team went through that. You don't have to forgive him, now or ever. I'm not asking you to."

Although the deep breath he took seemed to steady him, the effect didn't last for long. He nearly pitched forward on top of you until you helped him a little more gracefully to the ground next to you. For another chunk of time, neither of you said anything. You wanted to give him the opportunity to recover. To aid in this, you kept your gaze wandering specifically across the other side of the room.

"If I don't forgive him, then you and I are always going to be at odds," he said at last.

Your shoulders fell with relief upon your hearing him sound more like himself. "Says who?"

"I dunno. Logic, I guess. He's your boyfriend."

"Look, I can't promise that you're never going to have to see Loki again. He lives here. You're coworkers. One day, you're probably going to have to work together to save lives. But I can promise that you don't have to be on civil terms with him to be my friend. I won't force you to hang out with him. You can put the limits on when and how we see each other. Deal?"

He eyed your outstretched hand for a moment. Maybe you'd pushed too far too quickly. It was apparent to you that Clint had been carrying this weight around all by himself for a long time. Even Bruce probably hadn't been approached with the issue. You had only just curled your fingers into your palm to retract your hand when Clint grabbed it—but not to shake on your pact. Instead, he pulled you into a tight hug.

"And don't you ever say no one needs you again, okay?" you murmured into his ear. "You're the heart of this team, and every single one of us would say the same. No one here is more human than you."

Clint didn't respond with words, but the way his grip tightened around you made it plain that he understood exactly what you were getting at.

******

Manhattan flashed and glittered as much as a tacky mid-2000s gif once the sun went down. The colored lights atop the buildings bled like watercolors into the dark sky above. One such light—the neon blue "A" now familiar to everyone in the city—sat about level with a series of windows blazing warm white. These led into the Avengers' kitchen, where you and Bruce were attempting to put together a dinner for the ever-growing list of tower residents—not an easy task for the usual eight team members, but each new occupant came with their own list of preferences and dietary restrictions as well.

Bruce stood at the sink that night, squeezing a cheesecloth wrapped around a lump of soggy cauliflower. You had patches of flour up and down your arms, across the bridge of your nose, and all over your top. Next to you on the counter sat wonky circles of wet dough.

"All this effort," said Bruce, "and at least half of everyone will be gone by the time the pizzas are ready."

"You're being optimistic, Bruce. I say two-thirds of the team will be gone by then," you said.

"Maybe you're the optimist. They'll probably all have left before the oven's preheated."

You caught each other's eyes. Nothing happened for a beat or two. Then you both burst out laughing. Well, okay, you burst out laughing. Always on the lookout for potentially dangerous emotional spikes, Bruce kept himself to a chortle. But the exchange really hadn't even been funny enough to dignify that. Probably you'd just grown giddy after spending several weeks at this point doing the exact same thing. No matter how many chore schedules Pepper pinned to the front of the refrigerator, most nights, if anyone wanted dinner, it fell on you and Bruce to work something out.

"I suppose the fact that anyone might find cauliflower crust at all appetizing is amusing, but I didn't think the idea was worthy of quite that level of mirth."

"Loki!"

You perked up at the sound of his voice. When you turned, you found him in the doorway. He was missing his helmet, but otherwise wore every inch of his battle regalia—stained and marred through it might have been. A few chunks of his usually sleek hair were stiff and mussed at strange angles, and noticeable cuts marred his smooth knuckles. Bruce raised an eyebrow at this atypical disarray on Loki's part.

"What's with that getup? Weren't you just supposed to be off with Thor visiting Dr. Foster?" Bruce asked.

Loki let out a dramatic sigh as he allowed you to pull him into the room by both hands. You could tell by the strong odor of ozone coming off of him that he had come straight to see you when he and his brother got back. He must have been exhausted, so you shooed him into a chair before going to get him a glass of water. Bruce returned to his wet sack of vegetables.

"Neither of you are going to ask me what I've been doing, given my only intention was to meet my brother's girlfriend?" Loki said incredulously, once several minutes had gone by without conversation.

"I'm really not all that interested," Bruce replied.

Loki scoffed. "Oh, that's fine, then. Thor and I have only been busy the last two days performing an impromptu rescue of your entire realm."

“Really,” said Bruce, not even looking up from adding his riced cauliflower to a bowl of whisked eggs.

Loki sat up ramrod straight, eyes flashing. “Surely the incident has been on your mortal news!”

“I haven’t heard anything about it. What about you, [Name]?”

“I don’t think so. It’s been nearly 24-7 coverage about how much it’s going to cost taxpayers to retrieve the Helicarrier from the Potamac.”

"Wha-bu—how?" Loki spluttered. "All of London was covered in portals! You all nearly entered a second literal dark age!"

"But we didn't, because you stopped it, right?" asked Bruce.

"Well, yes. But you still should have heard about it at the very least!"

"Like [Name] said, we've had a lot going on our side of the pond as well."

Although Loki seemed inclined to continue pushing his point, his weariness got the better of him. He sank into his vacated seat and chugged the glass of water waiting on the counter. Then, with the air of someone forced to play along, said: "You said something about Helicarriers and the Potomac?"

"Steve, Natasha, and Sam blew up the nation's next-gen security system," you said.

"There were Nazis involved," Bruce added.

"Who the Hel is Sam?' asked Loki.

You decided that now wasn't the time to lecture Loki on that being the lesser concern here. "New guy. Used to be in the Air Force. He and Steve met at the VA in D.C."

"So another terrifically boring Goody Two-shoes. How quaint. Anything else I should be made aware of?"

"Tony went back to Malibu to make up with Pepper," Bruce said, "and predictably got caught up in some astroturfing that blew up a small town in Tennessee and nearly killed the President."

"And we care about Tennessee because...?"

"And Pepper got superpowers! I'm not sure she still has them. If she does, she hasn't used them since she moved in. Too busy running Stark Industries from the penthouse, I guess," you said.

"Colonel Rhoades got the right to call his suit War Machine during Avengers missions," said Bruce.

Loki stared at him blankly.

"He was going by Iron Patriot? Had a red-and-blue color scheme like Steve?"

"I am certain I have no idea what you're talking about, Doctor, nor do I particularly care."

"Oh, and Steve's old war buddy isn't dead after all!" So joyful were you to share this news that you didn't even have to pretend the excitement over a development you'd foreseen. "Turns out he's been under the control of those Nazis this whole time. We're all on the lookout for Bucky now, so we can bring him to the tower and start his rehabilitation."

Which just might—though for obvious reasons, you couldn't say so out loud—avert the entirety of Civil War. Everyone would benefit from avoiding that tragedy, especially with Thanos sniffing around so early in the timeline.

But that news would mean nothing to Loki, and sure enough, he looked quite unimpressed. "So what you're telling me is that my first big heroic act on the planet got completely upstaged by your team's little domestic collection extravaganza?"

"Collection?" Bruce echoed, confused.

"Just how many people moved into this tower in the handful of days I was gone?"

"Three. Four, if you count the plans for Bucky," you answered.

"I leave for a couple of weeks, and you feel the need to compensate by adopting another batch of strays." His eyes went wide. Then he chuckled. "Oh. Oh, yes. I see. I leave for a mere handful of days, and already your need of me grew so great that you required four additional mortals to make up for my absence."

He declared this with such ringing confidence that you couldn't find the right words to contradict him with. Bruce, on the other hand, was not stunned into silence long.

"[Name]?"

"Yeah?"

"Get him out of here before I Hulk out and ruin all our hard work."

Loki leaned toward him, sparkling like some mid-2000s shojo love interest. "Why, Dr. Banner, why didn't you tell me you considered me such a cornerstone of your life? If you wanted me to pass on my excursion with Thor, I would have gladly done so. Now you have to meet and greet all these new people, and I know how distressing that must be to a man like you."

"[Name]."

Bruce spoke through his teeth. Something as common as Loki teasing him wouldn't be enough to cause a real Hulk out, something your boyfriend likely already knew.

"Please," he added in a stage whisper, "before he tries to 'help' us with dinner."

"What a marvelous idea! I'll just—"

You pulled him in the direction of the hallway just as an illusory chef's hat began to materialize over Bruce's curly hair. Worse even than the thought of the Hulk and Loki having a food fight in the tower kitchen was the potential result of Loki getting his hands on a pizza crust prior to it going into the oven.

"But I really feel like I could so something spectacular this time!" he protested.

"No one wants you around the food when you're so filthy." You marched onward without so much as a look over your shoulder. "Let's go take a shower."

The deadweight pulling your arm in the opposite direction lightened considerably. "Together?"

"That was the idea."

"Goodbye, Doctor! Do tell your little green friend that I miss him so."

Bruce responded in a manner that would have earned him a reprimand had Steve been around. Unfortunately, all that did was cause Loki further mirth. He spent the majority of the way to your quarters laughing, and only stopped when you paused to open the door. He gave you a fond, lingering look prior to following you inside. You felt his eyes on you as they crossed every inch of your body. His hand grasped yours to lead you toward the bathroom.

"Things have been going very well lately, haven't they?" he asked.

You thought of all the good going on, those things you and Bruce had shared with Loki and more. Maybe no one could claim life was perfect, but most everyone was doing better than they had been at this point in the MCU's timeline. Tony hadn't brought up Ultron even once!

"They sure have," you agreed, and entwined your fingers with his.

If this was dying, death was not so nearly as horrible as he'd feared.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Upon further rumination, dying was plenty painful. Thanos must have decided crushing Loki's windpipe had not been punishment enough. Now the Mad Titan sought to crack Loki's skull open with Mjölnir. For Odin's sake, Thanos had already cast Loki to the floor like refuse! Must he suffer further indignities before being allowed to pass?

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Evidently so. The lights having faded into a void of black, Loki pressed his eyelids still tighter as the pain lanced through his head.

"Would you—"

—just get it over with already, you overgrown prune, is what Loki intended to say. But he didn't even get the first two words out in understandable form. Trying to do so made him feel as though someone had stuffed his throat with shards of broken glass. A metallic taste filled his mouth, accompanied by some sort of warm liquid. He coughed the molten stuff out from within his burning chest.

"Shhhhhh," someone nearby murmured.

Whoever they were, they weren't Thor. That the voice belonged to a woman made that obvious; Thor had never shared Loki's predilection for swapping genders like clothing. Another of Thanos's monstrous children, perhaps?

Something wet prodded Loki's pounding forehead, and he lurched away—or attempted to. Once again, he found himself with little control over his own body. His shoulders whacked against a hard object that similarly could not be Thor. Even his brother wasn't that flat and unyielding.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Oh, for the love of—" the same voice said crossly.

The cool, damp thing near Loki's face vanished. He heard a squelching sound, then rapid footsteps crossing a floor—a distinctly not metal floor.

Bang! Bang! Ba—

A door opened.

"Miss [Name]," barked a new voice—not an Asgardian accent, Loki noted, and belonging to someone wholly unfamiliar to him, "if you don't—"

"I would request that you keep your voice down, Mr. Secretary," said the woman from before, albeit in a much cooler tone than the one she'd used with Loki.

A thump. Boots on wood, if Loki was not mistaken. His head hurt so badly even the softest noise felt like another blow, but he thought he could identify that much. Whoever this man was, he was now in the...room? Home? Escape pod? Loki finally had to know.

Though his eyelids felt welded shut, he pried them open to find himself somehow miraculously no longer aboard either the Statesman or Sanctuary II. Instead, the sight that greeted him was that of a small room. Night dark as pitch pressed against the windows, leaving only a multitude of candles burning on seemingly every surface to light the place. Their trail his eyes followed all the way to a doorway where two figures stood: a pale-skinned biped with a mustache towering over another biped entirely swallowed in shadows.

"And I," said the mustached one, "request that when I summon you, you come to see me. And if I have to come retrieve you, I request that you open the door at once."

"Mr. Secretary, I would remind you that I am under no obligation to follow your 'summons' at all."

"The Accords clearly state—"

"I may have signed your Accords, but I am not one your chess pieces to be moved at your whim. There were provisions put in place for people like me."

"People like you. Not people like him."

The man pointed in Loki's direction without taking his eyes off the woman. Had Loki been able to speak, he might have had a snide response prepared. But he couldn't, and he didn't, and the smaller figure stepped in front of the finger to shove the man's arm down.

"Please try to remember whose territory you are on, Mr. Secretary. Those provisions do allow me to act in self-defense," she said.

"Self-defense! Aiding and abetting more like." The man let out a scornful laugh. "That man is an intergalactically wanted war criminal!"

"Some might say the same of you in the near future, Mr. Secretary." The woman made to step away, but the man reached out to grab her shoulder before she could get very far.

"I have every right to take him into custody," he said.

The woman wrenched her bare, [color]-skinned shoulder out the man's grasp. "He is in no condition to be moved, especially not to your godsforsaken rock. Do you also have the right to watch him die?"

Though the man said nothing in response, Loki could see a mutinous glitter in his eyes despite the flickering candlelight surrounding all three actors in this little drama.

"He won't receive proper medical care at the Raft. We both know you taking him would be as good as a death sentence."

"I couldn't care less if the little bastard dies!" the man burst out. "How many of our good men and women have died because of him? And you think he ought to be allowed to make a full recovery and murder more?"

"How many more might die without him?" The woman's voice had dropped, and yet she sounded so firm that there could be no question that she meant what she asked. The man stared down at her, speechless once more, but this time his eyes had gone wide. "They're already here, aren't they, Mr. Secretary?" she went on in an innocent tone. "The monsters looking for the Stones? How many of your precious Avengers have already gone missing?"

A shock of ice-cold lightning flashed through Loki's very core. Stones? Avengers? Could he really be so cursed? Whatever stroke of luck had seen him use enough dark magic to escape Thanos with his injuries had been no luck at all. He'd only gotten away as far as Midgard, where at least two damned Infinity Stones waited for their master to claim them. Worse, by the sound of things, Thanos's children had already arrived and already won.

As his heart and mind raced, a burst of white light filled the room. The glare of it burned Loki's already aching head and left a smear of purplish blue across his vision. Terrified, able to breathe only shallowly without bringing more blood into his mouth, he blinked as fast as he could to recover his vision. He could do nothing but accept his fate now, whether that be at Thanos's hands or those of the angry man's, but he preferred to retain some semblance of dignity either way this go-round.

When at last he could see clearly again, however, Thanos did not stand in the wreckage of the building. Nor did any of his children, Loki realized, nor the man from before. Only one person remained, and that was the woman. She had her back toward him as another white light surrounded the door she stood in front of.

Then she turned her face to him. Their eyes met across the dark room. Her angry expression melted at once.

“Oh,” she said, “you’re awake.”

Loki didn’t even manage to open his mouth to answer before his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out from pain and fear.

******

Next Loki woke, he found himself in an airy, well-lit room. Day had broken, and clear sunshine beamed through the many windows on the walls. It was the same place he had woken in previously. The extinguished candles clustered across every visible flat surface were proof enough of that. He could also see the same door from before. Only one other shut door led away from where he lie. Nothing moved around him. Birds chirped outside at such a decibel that he could hardly believe he'd slept through their incessant racket.

Except that he still hurt. Bor, he hurt. But Loki had not lived this long without knowing, generally, what sort of situation he had gotten caught in. Throbbing, stabbing, straining, burning, he pushed himself into a seated position against the stack of pillows behind his head. His gasp for air when he made it felt like a knife lodged deep inside his throat. There would be time to catalog his injuries later, perhaps, and less of a chance of that if he didn't seize this opportunity to take note of where he was.

What he saw surprised him somewhat. Though tidy, the one-room structure held a lot of clutter. In between all the candles sat hunks of rocks and crystals, some polished, others rough. Many were Midgardian in nature, but others Loki could tell at a glance weren't local at all. Piles of books in varying conditions littered the polished wood floor. Every window held at least one plant, each different, each in obviously robust health. Perhaps strangest of all was the mound of pillows and knitted blankets a few feet away from his resting place—the only messy thing in the entire place.

Not that it mattered. This homey little cottage would not last long with Thanos on the way, if he had not arrived during Loki's second bout of unconsciousness. Rather than sitting around and admiring the cleaning job, he needed to be finding a way out. His leg screamed in pain as he forced it out from underneath the sheet and put his foot on the floor. He ignored it. What was a little pain now compared to what he would feel when Thanos got ahold of him again?

"You're not strong enough yet for that sort of nonsense," someone said.

He sucked in a breath so swiftly that it triggered another coughing fit. The taste of blood flooded his mouth once more. His head spun with pain. Something rustled softly over by the door. Then Loki heard footsteps for a second or two before he felt a hard object against his mouth. Before he could gather his wits about him enough to shove the object away, a cold, bitter liquid flowed across his tongue and into his waiting throat. Loki spluttered as much of it entered his lungs, and yet even as he did the pain in his chest subsided somewhat.

Once his breathing evened out, the concoction stopped pouring into his mouth. The hard object vanished. Loki inhaled tremulously.

"I told you that you weren't strong enough," said the same voice from before. Now that he thought about it, Loki recognized the voice as belonging to the woman who had kept him safe the last time he'd been awake.

It was she that sat beside him now. His eyes met hers consciously for the first time—beautiful, sparkling, [color], and indignant. Definitely indignant. How women across so many realms and cultures could master the same look was a mystery for the ages. She didn't give him a chance to ask. With a snort, she stood and bustled over to the door through which the mustached man had burst before. After she'd gathered a weaved basket into her arms, she stepped over to a nearby kitchen hung with shining copper pots and bouquets of drying herbs.

"That was hardly my fault," Loki said into the silence. "You startled me. I didn't realize I had company."

The woman smiled at him over her still-bare shoulder. "You don't. You're company. And from the stories I've heard, Loki of Asgard ought to be a little more difficult to catch unawares."

"You'll forgive me if my near-death experience put me a little off my game."

Again, she said nothing. The sink turned on without a touch as you unloaded dirt-encrusted vegetables from the basket. Interesting. Though the room held many trappings of the bog-standard Midgardian witch, Loki had never seen a Midgardian perform any sort of magic, mundane or not.

"And to whom should I direct my thanks for saving my life?" he asked pointedly.

"Me. Mostly."

"Yes, and who is me?"

She paused in unloading her foodstuffs to give him a pursed-lipped look. Then her head whipped back away from him again she replied, "[Name]."

"[Name]." The sound of it tasted interesting on his tongue. "Thank you, [Name]."

"Don't thank me. I wouldn't say you're out of the woods yet."

Loki lifted a hand to his ruined throat. "So I've noticed. And may I ask..."

Well, now that he thought about it, he had a plethora of questions. A given name hardly got him anywhere. But before he could select a single query from the dizzying array crowding his mind, you supplied an answer him:

"I don't know."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't know what happened. The cards have been cryptic." Was that a note of annoyance he heard in your voice? "All I've got from them is something about Thanos and the Infinity Stones. I don't even think you’re supposed to be here."

He hardly registered that last sentence. The mere mention of the Mad Titan made Loki feel very cold even underneath the considerable bulk of his blanket. His voice sounded even raspier when he spluttered, "Are they—has he—"

"He's not here."

              "How would you know?"

"I'd know." You dropped your now-empty basket onto the gleaming wood countertop. Perhaps you spotted the horror in Loki's eyes as you turned to him, because you went on, "And if I didn't, my next-door neighbors would let me know."

"Neighbors?" Loki squeaked. Clearing his throat only made his vocal cords throb.

You didn't remark on that, just nodded slowly. "They're the ones that brought you to me a few days ago."

At last, something that Loki could latch on to! Even the vaguest of clues as to his location would aid him in working out a spell. He'd escaped from Thanos once; he could do it again.

"And where, exactly, might your neighbors have found me?" he asked.

You opened your mouth. Loki leaned forward in anticipation. Before you could utter a single word, however, someone knocked on the door. The noise was a far cry from the incessant, head-rending banging of earlier. Still, he noticed that your normally [color] skin paled several shades at the sound.

"That's probably them now," you said.

That didn't quite explain your change in color or the jittery way you rushed over to the door. Loki's eyes followed you there. Too late did he think to pull the blanket over his head to hide himself. In his current condition, it would have been a struggle to do so before you opened it to reveal —

"Steve? Natasha?"

At least you sounded as horrified as he felt by the sudden appearance of two Avengers on your doorstep. They could be no other, though they didn't look quite right. The former had dark hair now, as well as a beard, and the latter had turned blonde. But who else could it be? Who else would show up at Loki's weakest point?

His alarm increased as you threw your arms briefly around Natasha. The alarm swiftly turned into suspicion when he noticed she made no move to throw you off.

"I don’t understand," you said, as you released her and allowed the two to enter your home. "Why are you back? Where's Tony?"

"We're not sure," Steve answered.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than did his and Loki's eyes meet across the room. Loki noticed that Steve's gaze had changed just as drastically as his appearance in the intervening years. Much of the sadness was gone. Now there was just some blazing hardness dampened not at all as he took in Loki's injuries. Loki knew that Natasha was looking at him, too, but he was too busy with his staring contest with Steve to pay her much mind.

Oddly, he felt no satisfaction whatsoever when Steve broke their stare off to return his attention to you:

"How's your patient?"

You didn't miss a beat. "Not well."

"Can you leave him?"

"No."

"Is moving him an option?"

"Absolutely not."

"Better question." Loki started painfully at the sound of Natasha's voice right next to him. She'd come to stand beside his bed, arms crossed, the look in her eyes even colder than Steve's had been. "Do we care what happens to him?"

Of course. Of course Loki had escaped the greatest threat the universe had ever seen—for a given value of "escape," he had to admit—only to die at the hands of the so-called heroes his brother had considered his friends. At least Steve's presence was likely to ensure Loki's death came swiftly. If Thanos's children were already scouting out the planet, perhaps Natasha would even be doing him a favor.

"Rhodey wouldn't have told us he was here if what happens to him didn't matter," Steve said.

"If he can't help us, I fail to see what benefit there is in keeping him alive."

"Help you with what?" you cut in, voice as sharp as steel.

Natasha stepped away from Loki. He let out a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. Relaxing his muscles made the blood rush through his body so hard it made him dizzy—but it did not distract him from hearing Steve's answer to your question:

"We're going to Wakanda. They can remove Vision's Stone there without killing him."

"We hope," said Natasha.

"It will work."

"Sounds great." You didn't sound like you agreed with your own sentiment. "What do you need either of us for to do that?"

"They'll come, [Name]. We'll have the last of the Stones with us. They'll all come. Maybe even Thanos himself."

"You'd be a huge asset," Natasha added.

"We could use all the help we can get. And that includes Loki."

Suddenly, all eyes were on Loki. He licked his lips. "And why should I bother to help you all?" he rasped at last.

No one looked surprised by this question. Steve's eyebrows lifted slightly before he said, "It's your universe at risk, too. And from the sound of it, you wouldn't have made it very long if Tony and Rhodey hadn’t brought you here."

"Oh, yes, thank you.” His lip curled; he hoped that Steve could not hear his wildly beating heart. "Thank you so much for the rescue. And just in time to be obliterated along with the rest of reality! You shouldn't have."

"We're going to do our best not to let that happen. What about you, [Name]?" he asked as he turned back to you.

Loki felt rather than saw your gaze on him, searching and gentle. He found that he could not lift his head to meet your eyes. Then, in a soft tone full of regret, you said:

"I can't."

"If we lose this, there's a good chance he'll die anyway," said Natasha.

"He'll die for sure without anyone here to look after him."

She opened her mouth, but whatever nasty remark she planned to make next, Steve silenced her with a hand on her shoulder.

"We understand," he told you.

You nodded.

Without another word, the two Avengers left the cabin. You watched them go until Natasha pulled the door shut behind them. Silence buzzed through the room like electricity. You did not move. So long did you stare at the door that Loki half-expected it to burst into flame; the same could be said about the length of time he spent staring at the back of your head. He opened his mouth, found it dry, licked his lips, and tried to speak evenly:

"If you hurry, you could still catch up with them."

You shook your head, turning to head back to his bedside.

"Truly," he said. "I can make it on my own. Why, I only feel mostly like dying now instead of completely like dying."

"And you only feel that good because I've been here to take care of you." From the silver pitcher on the bedside table, you poured some smoking, purple concoction into the nearby cup. Then you sat down on the edge of the bed and held it out to him. "Speaking of, drink this."

A delicate sniff of the cup thrust toward him indicated that this was the same bitter brew you'd forced down his throat earlier. He did not take it. "I am a god. I can take care of myself."

"If I leave, you won't make it until tomorrow. This stuff doesn't keep, and you can't make it yourself." When Loki made no move to take the cup from you, you rolled your eyes. "Same thing if you won't drink your medicine."

He wrinkled his nose, but accepted the glass. Instead of swallowing the foul-smelling stuff, he cradled it in his hands. "Why are you doing this for me?"

"I don't think even one life should be given up if I have the power to save it. That's all," you said.

"Even if they could die anyway?"

"Even if they could die anyway." You cocked your head to one side, regarding him quietly for a few moments. Then you stood again. "Drink up, and get some rest. Hopefully the rest of the world will still be here the next time you're awake."

A sudden surge in pain obliterated Loki's desire to retort. Steeling himself, he lifted the potion to his lips and gulped it down as quickly as he could. The relief came over him almost at once, so heady that it made his head spin. Darkness crept into the edges of his vision. Before he could wonder if this was Thanos's victory, natural sleep overtook him. Perhaps dying this way would be easier, he thought, than what might face him later in that tiny cabin.

******

The potion’s effects only did so much for him after that dose. Loki slept fitfully, plagued by a leaden weight in his stomach that even sleep could not dispel. His dreams ended in exploding planets, in melting cities, in scorching pain. All the magic sedative coursing through his system did was drag him along from one cataclysm to the next. Try as he might, he could not tear himself into the hellscape of his reality—not until a loud clang issued from somewhere nearby.

“Owwww!” Loki snapped as he forced his eyelids open. At least this awakening did not hurt as badly as the last two had. The clear, watery light of morning only worsened his headache a little as opposed to a tremendous degree.

And he knew where he was. That helped. Though the panic searing the inside of his rib cage did not abate, he doubted that anyone observing him would be able to tell that at a glance. At least he managed to refrain from throwing himself out of the bed this time. This allowed him to maintain some dignity as he searched for the source of the noise.

And there you stood in the kitchen. One of those copper pots sat steaming on the island. As though you could sense his eyes on you, you looked up from your stirring.

“Congratulations. The rest of the world is still here,” you said.

How little he cared about this backwater rock when Thanos could set the entire known universe on fire should he succeed in wresting the last Infinity Stone from Steve's all-too-human fingers. Biting back this retort, Loki struggled into a seated position. He was pleased to find himself recovered enough to do so on his own.

“So I see,” he said at last, once he noticed you watching him. “So did your friends…” he didn’t quite know how to finish that sentence. He didn’t quite know which question he wanted answered, or what answer he wanted to hear either.

You shook your head. “I won’t hear back from them unless they get back.”

“Not even your precious cards could tell you?”

“Even if they could, I wouldn’t ask. All I can tell you is that you and I are still standing.”

‘In a manner of speaking.’ Loki took a moment to glower at his weak legs. “Yes. How much longer will that be the case, I wonder.”

“There’s no use fatalizing about it. Would you like some porridge?”

The gears in Loki’s mind took several seconds to adjust to the abrupt change of subject. Unfortunately, the moment he gave any real thought to the sweet aroma wafting from the pot, his stomach rolled so badly he couldn’t open his mouth to reply. Who knew what sort of muck might pour out of it, given all the strange things you’d forced down his throat during your short acquaintance?

“I’ll add something to your medicine to help with nausea.” A note of sympathy had crept into your voice. “We need to get something solid in your stomach before too much longer.”

Making breakfast, gathering food, healing him—what good would all of this effort do in the end? Probably you just wanted a distraction from the inevitable doom you both faced. Thor’s ragtag bunch of misfits had defeated Loki, but he was in no condition to consider himself a threat the same level as Thanos. The Avengers didn’t even have Thor anymore.

Loki’s eyes suddenly burned, and his throat felt all over again the pressure of Thanos’s enormous fingers. The thought of what might have happened to his brother in the aftermath of Loki’s escape would not bear thinking about. Time to focus on other things.

There wasn’t much else to focus on but you, however. He watched as you doled out a serving a mush into a waiting wooden bowl. You ate it quickly. Then you took your pot and carefully spooned the rest of the food into a line of glass jars sitting on the countertop.

Loki noticed that you moved differently than other Midgardians, now that he could stop and take the time to observe you at length—more graceful, more intentional, with no wasted movements whatsoever. Mortals could be taught to replicate such movement, but they could never achieve the same kind of ability as beings superior to them.

Only when you’d easily hefted the heavy object over to the sink did he finally say, “You’re not human, are you?”

You looked over your shoulder at him, expression guarded. “Half,” you said at last, then shifted some hair away from one of your ears. Doing so revealed that ear to end in a perfect, delicate point.

“You’re a light elf,” Loki said wonderingly.

“Half,” you said again, before returning to the chore of cleaning your dishes.

“What are you doing so far from Alfheim?”

“The whole half-human thing? Yeah, it didn’t exactly endear me to my family there.”

“But why here? There are light-elf communes in the realm.”

“Those jackasses at the North Pole declined to house me as well. One human per pole, apparently. And half-humans count.”

“There’s an entire galaxy out there. You could have gone anywhere.”

“By then, I’d figured out I was better off on my own.” Water continued to run over your hands and bare forearms, but these had stilled. Your gaze was fixed on some distant point in time. Then it snapped back to his face. “It was a long time ago. I went to SHIELD, traded a few goods and services for secrecy. And Howard Stark let me build a place near where he was stationed. I’ve been here ever since.”

“That sounds…lonely.” Lonely in a way that Loki understood; lonely in a way he’d always felt growing up, although he hadn’t understood why—lonely in the way he’d been after he had discovered his true heritage.

You shrugged flippantly. “It worked pretty well up until the Accords. Now I’ve always got Ross breathing down my neck.”

“The Accords?”

“It’s an Avengers thing, or at least Ross wants it to be.”

“So you—”

“Are not an Avenger.” Finished with cleaning, you tipped the pot onto the counter upside down, dried your hands on the waiting towel, then turned to face him. “I’ve never been one, and I’ll never be one.”

Loki found his body loosening somewhat after this revelation. Strange. He hadn’t noticed he’d been so taut to begin with. “And yet they came to you for aid,” he pointed out.

“I do aid them, sometimes. But not because some Midgardian law says I have to. Like I said before, if I have the power to save one life I’ll do it, whether or not my neighbors believe that life is worth saving. If anyone can get rid of Thanos, it’s them. But they couldn’t save you.”

“Is a single life worth saving if they can’t?”

“I guess that’s up to the person whose life it is.”

“And the life Thanos leaves them with.”

He noticed then you had gone very still. You cocked your head to one side and regarded him down your nose. “Do you regret it? Being saved?”

Loki inhaled sharply. How could he answer that question? For all the aggravation and fear he felt about his present circumstances, to reply in the negative would be terribly rude. Your bedside manner left much to be desired. Your skill in healing, on the other hand…

The sudden disintegration of half the plants in the room saved him from having to voice his thoughts. Your eyes locked onto his. Neither of you breathed a word. Somehow Loki still knew your thoughts to be the same: The Avengers had at last done the unthinkable. They had failed.

******

Some things Loki grew accustomed to over the years following what came to be called "The Snap." He grew accustomed to the new, permanent roughness of his voice. He grew accustomed to the slight limp from his injuries becoming more pronounced when the wind turned cold. He grew accustomed to eating food only available seasonally, to working for that food, to sharing a smaller space than he'd ever lived in before. He grew used to braiding his lengthening hair each day. He even grew accustomed to the smell of the chicken coop.

That day, the stench was worse than most others. An unexpected rainstorm had blown in overnight, and left everything damp or dripping, from the branches overhead to the edges of the roof. Loki shook his hood back as he made to the door, scuffed his worn boots on the welcome mat, and entered the cabin.

"Breakfast," he announced, somewhat breathless after his run for cover.

You stood already working at the stove. He placed the basket he carried in an empty space near your elbow. After a quick glance at his sodden figure, you reached under the piece of cloth he'd placed over the eggs, pulled two out, and cracked them over the skillet. Only once the food was sizzling did you offer him a warm smile.

Instead of saying anything, Loki swallowed and did his best to avoid your gaze.

"Thanks," you said into the silence.

"I had no issues with gathering eggs for you this morning. I wanted to check on Gunnhild myself."

"How is she?"

Loki hummed noncommittally as he went to a drawer for cutlery to set the table. He couldn't quite put words to the worry he felt nowadays over so much as Midgardian hens of all things. Perhaps he felt obligated to keep alive as many beings as he could after Thanos had taken so much. After finding one of his ladies so lethargic the evening prior, he'd spent a long, sleepless night fretting over her condition until he could trek to the pen under the pretense of helping with the morning meal. Truth be told, Gunnhild had seemed livelier then, but still, his thoughts continued to linger over her when he sat down in one of the two heavy wooden chairs.

The sound of a plate being placed in front of him snapped Loki from his musings. He did not know if he liked the understanding look you shot him as you slid into your own seat across from him. His stomach twisted painfully until he looked away from your face again.

Add that to the somewhat shorter list of things Loki had not grown accustomed to since the Snap.

"I'll put a little something extra in the feed today. She'll hardly know she had a respiratory infection."

More and more often lately, Loki found himself unable to meet your eyes, and when he did force himself to do so, his insides would suddenly feel hot. Had he been a younger or more ignorant being, he might have been inclined to blame the numerous concoctions you forced him to drink (some days with more arm-twisting than others) even this much time after his near-fatal injuries. You seemed to have magic for every aliment known, for chicken and Jotun alike. Why not a philter as well?

But he had been alive long enough—been in love often enough—to know the truth. These physical sensations had nothing to do with your talents, and everything to do with his...isolation? Rescue? Maturing?

He had never believed himself to be one of those fools capable of falling head over heels for someone for no greater reason than that they had nursed him back to health. What a pathetic way to return the kindness you had shown him—all the panaceas grudgingly swallowed; all the staggering walks contemptuously taken; all the nights you'd slept in a makeshift nest of quilts when Loki disdainfully refused to leave your bed.

The sudden lack of people in the world had not put the responsibility of his rehabilitation on your shoulders. You had taken that on willingly well before the Snap. But he did believe that, had Thanos not succeeded, you might have happily ended up without such of a chore of a lingering houseguest. Every morning he woke began anew a day you could decide Loki had overstayed his welcome. His only consolation was that, surely, these feelings would fallow once he no longer came in contact with you.

But then surely, too, his body would fall apart without your aid. So Loki kept his mouth shut. Cohabitating with you while keeping his growing romanticism a secret was difficult; he shuddered to think of the alternatives left to him in this half-empty universe.

Once again, you interrupted his thoughts, this time with a wry observation of: "You're overthinking something again."

His rough gulp hardly helped his case any more than the following, "I am not."

"You are."

I should think I know my own thoughts better than you do."

"Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Loki of Asgard isn't nearly as difficult to read as he thinks he is. Your mouth gets these deep wrinkles at the corners, and..." Trailing off, you frowned before you leaned forward to grasp the hand he had resting on the table. "Is that what this is about?"

You must have seen his split-second grimace when you'd referred to him in that mocking way of yours. If you'd noticed that, he had no doubt you'd spotted the way he stiffened when you touched him like that as well. Be that as it may, you kept your fingers lightly resting against his as you went on:

"We need to talk about it."

“I don't have the faintest idea what it is there is to discuss," he answered firmly.

You laughed. The sound made Loki's chest ache. "You do."

"I assure you I do not. And if you're going to insist on this level of condescension, I'd much prefer to get some work done than sit around listening to your riddles. Now, if you'll excuse me—"

"Why don't you go ahead and admit that you were eavesdropping when Natasha visited last night?"

If your iron grip hadn't been enough to keep Loki rooted to his chair, your question would. He felt blood rush to his face, try as he might to fight the urge to blush. "I beg your pardon?" he asked, knowing all the while that he would not hit quite the right note to express his feigned incredulity.

You did not answer. Neither did your hand loosen. A staring contest ensued, though it did not last long. Loki knew better than to argue when he spotted the familiar gleam there. What would be the point in lying anyway, when this Borforesaken rasp had so ruined his famous silver tongue? After another moment or two of internal debate, he finally wilted.

"If you already knew I knew, why not say something sooner?" he asked.

"You'll need to learn someday that those who eavesdrop often hear things they don't like."

"And those who refuse to eavesdrop often hear nothing worth hearing at all."

"You could simply quit lurking around and speak with us face-to-face."

"And risk the conversation turning to naught but insults targeting me? You'll have to forgive me for preferring to 'lurk' for what morsels of information your friends deign to offer you in secret."

"There was no secret."

"Oh?" Trapped as he was with his hands bound to the table, Loki's only escape was to avert his eyes to the rain-streaked window near the table. "If it was common knowledge, why not bring it up yourself without having to pry it out of me?"

You let go of him and held your hands up in a galactic sign of surrender that he could only see out of the corner of his eye. "I did not wish to upset you unduly."

"Upset me? Is that what you think? You think that I'm upset that my people have established a settlement in this Realm and are attempting to move on?"

"Aren't you?"

"Obviously not!"

Once more, Loki felt instead of saw your probing look. He folded his arms across his chest and carefully avoided so much as turning his head in your direction. This seemed to succeed in getting you to drop the subject; you said nothing else. Then you pushed your chair away from the table with an almighty screech and a firm, "Let's get you packed, then."

He couldn't help rising to his feet after you in his panic. "What?"

"Let's get you packed," you repeated. "New Asgard awaits the coronation of its king."

"Let it wait! Forever, if it must!"

"Why should it? Natasha's told me all about how badly you want to rule."

"Wanted. Wanted. That was a different time. A different me!"

Loki's heart had not hammered so hard since the moment of the Snap. Distantly, he realized that the exertion did not cause him as much pain as it used to. But would it be enough?

You did appear to notice his desperation, for you paused in some gesture that seemed to have caused his toothbrush to float out of its cup. Silence fell. He realized you were waiting for him to explain himself. Of all the cruelties you had enacted upon him, this perhaps might have been the cruelest of them all.

"New Asgard—" His breath hitched. Loki licked his lips and tried again, "New Asgard little needs yet another descendant of Odin on the throne. Let Brunnhilde keep the crown. I want it not."

Though admitting as much made him in ache in a way Thanos's assault had not, Loki knew the years since that assault had changed him. Between his inglorious defeat on this very planet, the series of humiliations leading up to Ragnarök, and his near-death among the Asgardian refugees, he had learned to see himself more clearly. Leadership did not suit him as he'd once convinced himself it had. And besides, what good would it do for what remained of the spirit of his childhood home? Being among his people again would only remind him more sharply of what he'd lost—their true ruler amongst the most grievous of those losses.

"Then what do you want, Loki?" you asked softly.

He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Thought hard about his answer to your question.

It came without as much thought as he'd expected. So few of his responses were even possible anymore. But those that were surprised even himself. He wanted to learn the subtle ways of Midgardian magic. He wanted to memorize the patterns of the stars in this Realm. He wanted to eat vegetables and fruits and grains grown by the power of his own hands. He wanted to look after his chickens until they died at venerable ages. And to do all of that, any of that, there could be only one reply:

"I want to stay here," he whispered, so quietly he did not even know if he wanted you hear him.

But hear him you did. A dazzling smile the likes of which he'd never seen before spread across your face. Then, without giving Loki a chance to grasp the meaning of such an expression, you rushed forward and threw your arms around him in a suffocating embrace.

"Then stay," you breathed in his ear.

The surprise he felt at your sudden closeness dissipated rapidly. Soon, Loki wrapped his own arms around you in turn. He did not know how long the two of you stayed tangled up like that before you finally released him. But when you did, you looked so smug that he couldn't help but add:

"It's not as though I have any choice in the matter. I'd die in a week without your care."

"Oh, that." The smug smile transformed into a smirk. "I've been giving you placebos for months now. You're as mended as you'll ever be."

His jaw dropped nearly to the floor, causing a glorious peal of laughter to tumble from your mouth.

"You whined so much. What else could I do?" you asked by way of explanation.

"You fox!" he said, though he couldn't find it himself to be truly enraged. It was the sort of thing he'd have done to his brother, after all. Who would have thought he'd have found a kindred spirit in the middle of nowhere on Midgard of all places?

You neared again, now gazing directly into his eyes. "But you love me."

"That," Loki said as he cupped your cheek and brushed his thumb over the [color] skin there, "I believe to be unequivocally true."

******

More time passed, on the Podunk little rock Loki had once schemed to make his own just as slowly as it did in the greater, emptier galaxy. Seasons passed. The half-obliterated woods around the cabin grew thicker and greener every summer. Native creatures once sparse in the area returned in larger numbers.

There were no servants to lay out his clothes, nor banquets with food-laden tables as far as the eye could see. But there were fruits and vegetables brought forth by his own hands, homespun tunics created with care, and fresh eggs in abundance from his ever-increasing brood of chickens. There was bright sunlight by day and warm candlelight by night. But best of all, there was you.

Well, most of the time you kept close to the cabin you both called home. Nearly five years to the day since the Snap, Loki stood alone in the kitchen. He hardly ever wandered far afield those days. What reason had he to do so? Surely Ross had not been the only Midgardian eager to see Loki pay for his crimes, and Loki was hardly a welcome visitor at the Avengers headquarters on the other side of the forest—which was the second most common place to find you, and where you'd traipsed off to during the still-dark hours that morning.

Loki found himself worrying over his pot of stew more than he'd have liked to admit now that it had grown dark once again. Not about the stew, not this time; he felt he had accomplished making a perfectly edible, if not very exciting, stew with produce from the garden you and he had canned that fall. Given that he'd hardly been offered much opportunity to create purposefully edible meals as Asgardian royalty, no one could deny this to be a culinary accomplishment on his part.

You hardly ever kept him waiting this long for you to return from the large, ugly compound. He could not begrudge you going to see friends. On the other hand, he knew how the remaining Avengers still felt about him. It was the same way he felt about them. If any of them had the silver tongue he had had once...

Before he could spiral into the possessive behavior he inclined toward despite your frequent admonishments, he heard the sound of footsteps—barely. Light elves moved so lightly he would not have heard your approach had he not been listening so closely for it. The door swung open shortly after this noise, and you stepped inside the room already filled with lit candles.

"I'm home," you said cheerily, and unnecessarily.

"So I see." Loki gave the pot below him a pointed stir. "Did you enjoy your time with your...friends?"

"If you're going to be a sourpuss, I won't give you your surprise."

"I hardly want whatever gift the lovely Natasha might have sent along with you."

"It's from me. Do you want it? Yes or no?"

He knew better what you meant by the appraising look you shot him: Play along, or pay the price. "Please," he said as flatly as he could. Though you never used your considerable powers to hurt, he knew that an outright refusal on his part would probably wind up with him sprouting a pair of donkey ears for the foreseeable future, or something equally annoying and hard to explain when your neighbors inevitably came by to mock him.

You grinned despite his obvious lack of enthusiasm. One of your fingers made a series of shapes in the air. Then, out of seemingly nowhere, your familiar basket appeared next to Loki's elbow. A simple blue-and-white checked towel covered its contents.

"Open it," you said when all he did was squint at you.

It wasn't moving, so Loki took that to mean lifting the fabric would not be dangerous. Nestled underneath sat a pile of off-white mushrooms with brain-like knobs atop the stems.

"We went a little over during the meeting. I knew you'd have already started dinner. When I stumbled on these little guys on my way home, I picked them up for you as a treat."

All fear of Natasha finally convincing you to give him up died away for the moment. Loki pressed his lips together in a smile. "They're the perfect addition," he said, pulling the recently-cleaned cutting board toward him and starting to chop.

Your smile grew as you walked around him to gather bowls. "You're welcome."

"So what went on that took so long? Rewatching footage of Captain America's glory days?"

Instead of chastising him for his snide tone, you simply answered: "I thought you said you didn't want to be involved in anything we got up to."

"I don't."

"Then let's not talk about it anymore."

Loki spilled the sliced fungi into the pot with something of a startled expression. You would normally find something of note to tell him after a two-hour conversation with the Avengers, and yet you had nothing to relay after being with them all day?

"[Name], what are you hiding?"

"Is the stew ready yet?"

"You're trying to distract me."

"No," you drew the word out as you sat the last utensil on the table. He caught a flash of mischief in your [color] eyes. You bared your teeth in a wicked grin. Then you sauntered forward and looked him up and down before you slid your hands up his shoulders to interlock them behind his neck. "This is me trying to distract you."

You pressed your mouth to his without sparing him a moment to retort. Loki did not forget the thread of the conversation, per se, but kissing you back seemed of greater importance than pursuing the matter. Who cared about the inconsequential scheming of those who had already lost everything? Certainly not him, not when, egged on by his enthusiastic response, you smiled against his lips and surged forward. He had no choice but to let you push him onto the nearby counter to allow you space to work.

"Still curious about what I got up to this afternoon?" you asked during a brief pause.

"Not in the slightest," Loki said honestly. He cupped your face to pull you closer to him again.

By all rights, it ought to have turned out to be a very good day: a stew with fresh mushrooms; your eagerness to touch him, even simply as a distractoin. Loki might have been perfectly content to remain distracted had something not slammed open the door just as something besides dinner began to heat up.

You whirled to face the intrusion—but you moved no further, frozen, it appeared, by the massive shape moving through the doorway.

"Thor?" you asked.

"Thor?" Loki echoed, bewildered.

The shape crossed into what little light the multitude of lit candles allowed, and still Loki could not believe it. Whoever had burst in could not be his brother. His brother was dead, not to mention Thor would never let himself go to such a degree. This being looked thicker and flabbier than Volstagg on his worst days. They also had stringy hair and a scraggly beard that obviously had not been washed in some time.

"You followed me?" You sounded outraged, which typically spelled trouble for the offending party.

Thor—or whoever the shape was—did not spare you a glance, terrified or otherwise. Their eyes remained fixated on Loki's face, and as Loki met their gaze, he felt a spark of recognizing flare hot and painful somewhere deep inside his stomach.

"I had to see it for myself," the apparent stranger rumbled.

And that was all it took. Loki slid off the counter and stepped around you. A torrent of emotions constricted his chest. The room around him spun. After a minute or so of thick swallowing and struggled, he managed to open wide his arms and step in Thor's direction.

"Brother, you're alive!"

Thor did not meet Loki's cheer with any of his own. "So this is where you ran off to hide."

Loki felt his smile slide off his face. "Pardon me?"

"I thought you were dead. I mourned you."

"As I did for you. I thought surely Thanos—"

"I should have known your vanishing was nothing more than yet another trick!"

"Well, I confess to using a smidgen of magic to get me here, but—"

"We needed you. The galaxy needed you. I needed you!"

With every statement, Thor's voice grew louder and louder. Rarely since his brother's exile had Loki seen him so enraged. He stared as the noise washed over him, and allowed his arms to drop to his sides. These stayed there when Thor took another step in Loki's direction.

"Perhaps it was a lie. Perhaps you always intended to aid Thanos in achieving his wicked goal."

You stepped forward to put yourself between the two men. "Hey. He was in no condition to fight. If he'd gone to Wakanda, he would have died for sure."

"As he had me believe he already had for five years. My brother chose his own life over half the galaxy." Thor's eyes flicked disdainfully between you and Loki, a gesture at odds with the bright red of his face. "But I should not be so surprised. Loki has always been a coward."

"Don't you—"

"[Name]."

Loki spoke the word softly, but his tone must have gotten through to you. Now you spun to gape at him. He merely held his hand out in a quelling gesture and told Thor:

"You're right."

It had taken a long time—eons, really—for Loki to accept the truth about himself—a long time and nearly dying more than once. If he could go back and change things, he would. How different would things be for everyone if Loki had never spent that time being coddled by the Grand Master, or masqueraded as Odin for so long, or agreed to invade Asgard, or even led Laufey through the secret passages to the palace? Always he had served himself. What argument had he that a different choice would not have saved untold lives just as Thor claimed?

But as things stood, Loki could not even change Thor's thunderous expression with his admission.

"You have changed, Brother, and not for the better."

"Perhaps I have changed," Loki conceded. "But is this not what you have always wanted for me? Living quietly, not causing trouble? Happy?"

"Happy at what expense, Loki? At least I am still trying. I am still fighting!"

"Are you? Judging by the state of your facial hair, I'd hazard a guess that's a more recent development."

"Loki," Thor growled through clenched teeth.

"You say I've changed for the worst? Fine. No one is inviting you stay for dinner and to get to know the new me or the person I've chosen to stay with."

Silence rang audibly through the dark cabin, punctuated only by the bubbling stew. Thor inhaled slowly. His shoulders migrated to up around his ears. Loki braced himself for a tirade that would have made their father proud. Instead, Thor's voice was flat and emotionless as he said:

"As usual, I will clean up your mess, Brother. And if in doing so, you are the one lost, perhaps this time I will not feel the grief of it."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than did Thor leave. He slammed the door behind him with such might that the whole cabin shook and several candles blew out. The sound of Thor's heavy footsteps faded quickly into the dark woods beyond.

"Loki?"

He had not realized he'd been staring at the place Thor had stood until you spoke his name. All he did in response was blink. Your warm hand enveloped his own, though this did nothing to quell his sudden tremors.

"Loki."

Words failed him. For the first time in his memory, Loki could think of nothing appropriate to say. Pain did not hold his tongue, nor injury, simply the fact that nothing would come to mind; nothing seemed to matter. But speak he must, or he risked standing there in the dark forever.

"How long?" he asked.

"What?"

"How long, [Name]?"

The fingers around his tightened.

"How long have you known my brother was alive?"

At last, he wrenched his hand free and turned to look at you. Tears sparkled in those eyes that had only a little while ago been gleaming with affection. That told Loki enough. He no longer needed you to answer.

"All this time," his mouth felt thick and clumsy, so he tried again with little improvement: "All this time, you knew. You knew Thor lived, and yet you allowed me to go on assuming otherwise!"

"If you'd just let me explain—"

"What is there to explain? I've spoken to you of the guilt I've felt over his death. You, of all people, knew what he meant to me. You could have freed me from all of that, yet you did not! What, did you believe I'd choose him over you? That I would flee to New Asgard the moment I realized my last remaining family member lived?"

The words were not as sharp as they once could have been. The tone itself was no longer smooth as velvet. They rose and fell like an overused axe. But the blow landed. You flinched.

Loki found he did not much care whether you did so because his words were true or his hysteria had been laid plain his voice. His throat throbbed where Thanos's fingers had once crushed it. Perhaps Loki should have let him. Dying that way would have hurt less than now, here, by the phantoms of everyone he had ever hurt.

You said his name again. He shook his head. Almost blindly, he stumbled through the shadows to the door, yanked it open, and stepped outside. Loki stood there on the step for a moment or two, breathing in the acrid smell of burning stew behind him before he pulled the door shut. Then he staggered off toward the quiet trees with little idea of where he was actually going.

The cold quickly leached beneath his tunic, but that he could handle. What he was not so sure of was his ability to handle any more heartbreak that night or, indeed, for the rest of his life.

******

Loki returned, for where else had he to go? The idea of turning to the Avengers for shelter he found laughable, and surely Thor wouldn't want him anywhere near New Asgard. Besides, Loki would miss his chickens—and he'd been in enough relationships during his life to know that an occasional nighttime walk did wonders to cool his head.

Wonders, yes; miracles, no. Although each sunrise since the Snap had felt like a miracle to him, the days following Thor's sudden reappearance twisted into a discomfiting slog. Each day followed the same routine: Loki would wake in an empty cabin with a neatly folded pile of quilts on the floor near the bed; he would eat the single roll on the counter; and he would gather his things and move mechanically through the chores that needed done even when he felt as though he were limping through a void. These would fill his time until he returned to the vacant bed to start again.

Two days he followed this routine before it grew too tiresome to ponder continuing for the rest of his life. What if his path led nowhere but to day after day after Borforsaken day of banal work and loneliness? Loki might have been prepared to accede to Thor's claims of his cravenness; he had not been so prepared to consider death at Thanos's hands may have been the better option for him.

And so he turned to the one activity that could stop him from thinking about the end of life: The beginning of it.

The cool spring midmorning appeared perfect for transplanting the pea seedlings he had picked up from their growing space on a windowsill back in the cottage. He knelt on a flat cushion of sorts in the midst of the mostly-bare garden to get to work. All he could hear was the chilly breeze blowing through the surrounding trees, their new leaves still too young to provide any noise of their own. His pale fingers worked the freshly-tilled dirt as he mentally measured the distance between plants.

Perhaps if Thor had had occasion to see Loki like this, elbow-deep in homemade chicken compost, he might have understood things a little better.

"Loki."

He did not turn away from his work at the sound of the familiar voice.

"Can we talk?"

"About what?" he asked evenly.

This was the first time you'd approached him since the argument. Obviously, you'd returned home a number of times, but only after he'd fallen asleep, and only to disappear again before he awoke. Loki half-expected you to leave again. A long pause followed his question before you surprised him by asking:

"Are you really going to make me say it?"

"I think that's the best way to open up negotiations, yes."

"Negotiations?"

Loki carefully piled a small mound of dirt around a recently-planted sprout. It waved back and forth as if to say thank you.

"I'm sorry," you said.

He adjusted the bamboo trellis embedded in the dirt behind his peas.

"I should have told you as soon as I found out about Thor. I didn't know for long. Natasha only told me when she knew he'd be coming to help them out, but it wasn't fair to you to keep it a secret."

Slowly, without moving his head at all, Loki sat up. His filthy fingers curled around his knees.

"I didn't want you to leave. I knew how much Thor meant to you, and I knew you'd go to New Asgard to see him. And what then? Would you ever come back?"

"That's hard to say when I was never given a choice in the matter."

Another length bout of silence. This time, however, Loki could hear something else over the wind: A soft sniffling that nearly had him moving to comfort you—nearly.

"You were right, Loki. I was scared."

"Scared of what?" he asked.

How could you be scared of anything? He himself had witnessed the power at your fingertips more than once, and Steve and Natasha certainly had tales to tell of your prowess. Surely nothing on Midgard existed to threaten the likes of you after all this time.

Now he risked a glance at you out of the corner of his eye. Never before had he seen you distraught. Flustered, yes. Angry, absolutely. Undone, perhaps fewer times than he'd have liked. But he could tell even from a distance that you hadn't slept since your fight a few days ago. Pronounced bags clung the bottoms of your eyelids, and you rubbed your hands together in obvious agitation. The urge to go to you grew stronger still.

"I've never belonged anywhere before you came along," you said in a rough whisper.

All his willpower shattered at the moment your voice broke. He half-rose, twisting toward you, unable to feign absolute disinterest any longer. Perhaps he might have drawn closer to you, had you allowed him. But you held out your hands with the fingers wide to indicate you needed him to keep his distance. Loki did, although he said softly:

"[Name], that's not true."

"I kept trying to find a place, but no one wanted me."

"You have the Avengers."

"They aren't—" You gripped your elbow tightly in the opposite hand as you turned your face away. "They aren't home."

Before he could speak—whether to dissuade you, or ask for more details, or even to put an abrupt end to this tête-à-tête, he had no idea himself—you barreled onward, apparently under the impression that if he did not let you say all this now, Loki never would.

"I've been here for a long time, a very long time. People move into that building. People move out. Sometimes they bother to get to know me. Most of the time they don't. It doesn't matter either way, because they all leave in the end. Steve, Natasha, Rhodey...they'll all leave permanently someday, too."

So intent on listening had he been that he flinched when you looked directly into his eyes.

"You're the only one who's ever stayed.

He could think of nothing more to say than, weakly, "If you're so desperate for company that someone too injured and cowardly to leave is appealing—"

"You are not a coward, Loki."

"This is not about me," he said, then added, "unusual though that may be. For now, we are talking about you."

"I don't know what else it is you need me to say."

Truthfully, he needed nothing. An apology had been all he desired, and you'd returned with that and an admission that he'd been in the right. So slowly, as though he were trying to sneak up on a snoozing Thane Regin with a pair of shears, he stepped in your direction.

"Pretending for one moment that your attachment to me is anything other than imprinting on an admittedly very charismatic invalid—"

You snorted.

"—why not tell me? Why not come to New Asgard with me?"

The hand on your elbow went pale with the force of your grasp. "I am not as Asgardian."

"Neither am I, as you well know."

"I am tired of trying to figure out where I belong. I tried just about everywhere. I will not be cast out again." You blinked at him fiercely. "If you want to go, you should go. Be with your people. Reconcile with your brother. I only wanted to let you know that you are precious to me, even if I acted poorly because of that."

The spell your gaze cast on him snapped. You both averted your eyes. It did not take Loki so long to recover. He found himself drawing in a deep breath of remarkably fresh air before closing the remaining gap between you. When he took the hand dangling your side, you inhaled sharply as you looked up at him. Encouraged, he squeezed your fingers.

"I will reconcile with my brother, when he is ready. But you're my people, [Name]. You ought to know that by now. Maybe I will desire to visit New Asgard someday. Know this, however: As long as you want me, I shall always return to you."

After another pause, you returned the squeeze. "I think it's safe to say I'll always want you. But I might be glad for an occasional break, now I think of it. It would be nice having my bed to myself from time to time."

"Without me to warm it, you won't sleep a wink."

Rather than reply, you broke into a smile as dazzling as the sun hanging over the forest. He felt the familiar warm hook of your palm at the back of his neck, then you pulled his lips down to yours for a long, lingering kiss.

"I love you, you realize," he murmured once you parted.

"Oh, my gods," you said breathlessly through a half-open mouth.

"Yes, I am rather impressive. It comes from centuries of practice. Why, my last partner—"

You cuffed him lightly on the back of his head. "No, Loki. Look!"

So he pulled away and did as you instructed—and what he saw took his breath away as well.

Where his sparse rows of tender pea shoots had been only minutes ago, now a multitude of plants threatened to crowd one another out. Extra trees and their roots intruded on the edges of the garden. Bees, butterflies, and birdsong filled the clearing in which you and Loki stood.

He felt his throat contract, but no words left his mouth.

You, meanwhile, lifted shaking hands to your mouth. "They did it."

"Who?"

"The Avengers."

"Did what?"

"They did it!" Now you shrieked, practically dancing in place. "They figured it out! They got the Infinity Stones! It worked!"

"The Infinity—is that what you were all doing that day?"

"Tony and Bruce made a time machine. We weren't sure that it would work, but..."

"It did," Loki finished for you, somewhat dazed himself.

It was back. It was all back. He did not have to leave this place to know that not only had Thor and his friends done the impossible to bring plant life back to this planet, but that beings of all natures would be returning across the entire universe.

But, of course, the galaxy never had been willing to give Loki Odinson a lingering period of peace and happiness. Every time he felt he stood once more on solid ground, the realms tilted on their axes. This occasion would be no different. No sooner had he realized the sparkling tears of joy in your eyes were reflected in his own than did a shadow fall—literally—across the entire woods.

Above, soaring through the once-radiant blue sky, winged a great, dark ship.

Thanos had returned.

In the span of a breath, you bounded in the direction of the Avengers' home. Loki felt all the blood rush from his face. That he remained standing was itself a miracle. He felt suddenly dizzy. His heart rushed. Black crept into the edges of his vision.

Just before you disappeared into the newly-thickened forest, he managed to croak, "Where are you going?"

You stopped to look over your shoulder at him. "You don't need me this time around. I'm going to go help them fight."

Loki pressed his shaking lips together. He could stay. He could stay, and be as safe as anyone could be when Thanos and his children arrived. With a shake of his head, he crossed to you.

"I'll always need you. We'll go together."