Title: he went with him gladly, as equals
Pairing: Loki/Steve
Author's Notes: Inspired by some discussion floating around on Tumblr, discussing the parallels between Steve and Loki's characters.
The title is from a line from The Legend of the Deathly Hallows.
Steve floated in a haze of unpleasant dreams - not quite nightmares, at least not the kind he'd call nightmares, but unpleasant - where he was in a crowd of people he felt he ought to remember. An unseen threat lurked menacingly overhead, and laser-sights flickered on the chests and heads and faces of Steve's loved ones. He could block the sights by standing in front of them, but then he had to run constantly from one person to the next to the next, and he couldn't possibly protect them all -
(the worst part is, he's not sure this is only a dream)
- when the haze shattered, leaving Steve awake and alone in a hospital bed in the darkness.
Alone? Suddenly Steve wasn't sure. There was a presence near the elevated head of the bed, seated - not on a flimsy plastic folding chair like Sam had been, but on the large dark bulk of a winged armchair. Steve squinted against the gloom, trying to make it out - long legs in sharply pressed suit trousers, a matching coat draped over the back, glove-encased hands resting on the iron head of an elegant, antique cane. His gaze flitted up further, catching a fleeting silhouette of long dark hair brushing against broad shoulders, the flashing glint of hard eyes and a sharp smile.
Steve was suddenly aware that the darkness around his bed was too complete to be in the hospital any longer; there were no blinking lights, no beeping monitors, no fluorescent glow from the hallway beyond. It was just him and the stranger, the bed and the chair making an island of reality in a vast gulf of nothingness.
And with that Steve was no longer sure of the awake part of the equation, either.
His visitor spoke first.
"It's a shame, isn't it," said a voice that was smooth, cultured and refined, "when a perfectly choreographed ultimate sacrifice scene goes to waste?"
Steve knew that voice, knew the face and shape that went with it, although the elegant-suit look was new. It seemed to fit, though, the same way that it fit in with the darkness and the flashing unreality of the whole scene. "Loki," he said, and managed to keep his voice steady despite the rough dryness of his throat. "I thought you were supposed to be dead."
"So did I." The curling tips of hair shivered as he lifted his shoulders in a casual shrug. "Yet despite all my efforts, I am not dead." He leaned forward, and clear green eyes seemed to pin Steve to the pin. "Nor, despite all your efforts, are you."
"I wasn't trying to kill myself," Steve retorted hotly, angrily. "Suicide is a sin. And a selfish cowardly act at that."
Loki tilted his head to one side, curious and politely skeptical. "And yet, time and time again you throw yourself upon that grenade," he said.
Unnerved, Steve looked away. He didn't know how Loki seemed to know so much about Steve - his history, his actions, his private thoughts - but then again, maybe this wasn't Loki at all. Maybe this was just some dream-figment of his imagination, coming to voice the desires he'd left long unspoken.
When he failed to respond, Loki heaved a sigh. "I don't understand you, Captain," he said. "It is easy to see why a creature such as myself might seek oblivion. I was once a prince, and then I lost everything: disgraced and orphaned, outcast and fallen. But you..." He leaned forward again, his gaze pinning Steve as though he they could pierce his skin and flay the soul beneath. "- you have everything. Prestige, honor, fame, friends, the regard of a whole nation... Why, then, do you seem so bent on self-destruction?"
Steve swallowed hard. This is either a dream, or it isn't, he reasoned; either way, he's probably not going to leave me alone unless I say something.
And who better than the keeper of secrets and lies, to tell the things that he could never say to anyone else?
"I always thought I'd die young - people with my bill of health didn't live long back in the '30s," he said aloud at last. "So I figured if I was gonna kick the bucket anyway, I wanted it to mean something. I wanted to die fighting, protecting the people I cared about.
"Yet here I am." Steve took a deep breath, although it hurt, and let it out. "Seventy years late and everyone I cared about is dead. Now with this serum in me I'm not even sure I'm ever gonna die of natural causes. So what's it gonna be? The world's changed, and I haven't changed along with it. I keep on doing what I think is right but how much longer is that gonna work out?"
Loki frowned at him. "You fear failure so much that you would prefer death?" he said incredulously.
Steve shook his head, frustrated. "You don't understand," he said. "It's not just me who'll get hurt if I fail. When I screw up, other people pay for it. One of these days I'm going to give it everything I've got and I'm still gonna fail. And everybody who looks up to me now, will know it. Dead legends don't disappoint anybody. Living soldiers do."
He glanced up, met Loki's bright and searching gaze head-on. "We have a saying on earth... 'You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the monster.' Seems like an easy choice to me."
Loki snorted, a surprisingly cultured sound of utter disgust. "It always seems like an easy choice, until you are actually faced with it," he said. "Believe it or not, Captain, I too once strove to be a hero. And look at me now."
It was hard to imagine. It hurt to imagine. But that was what made Loki so awful and frightening of an enemy, and all at once so fascinating and compelling to Steve; to see in him the ruin of virtue twisted, of good intentions gone wrong and ruined beyond repair. To look into the eyes of a monster and see a hero looking back.
Loki's voice was soft, coming out of the darkness. "I have lived many more years than you, Steve Rogers," he said. "But your soul is mortal, even if your body is not. So let me make you a promise: when the day comes that you fear you have lost yourself, call on me. I will arrange a battle so mighty that it will serve for both of us as a pyre whose light will shine through the ages."
The tall, shadowed figure stood up from the comfortable chair, and leaned forward over Steve on the bed. For just a moment the sourceless light shone on his face fully, and Steve could read the longing there, the loneliness and bitterness and pain. Loki leaned down, and placed a gentle kiss on Steve's forehead that burned like acid. "And the both of us shall have the ending we crave."
Steve was still thinking of an answer to that, when the both of them were swallowed up; Loki by the darkness, and Steve by sleep.
~end.