Not This Mind and Not This Heart, I Won't Rot

"And after the storm, I run and run as the rains come." He explained the dream again as though it were for the very first time. His eyes filled with tears and his words were choked back like a terrible cough from bronchitis. His green eyes flicked to his mother's and she smiled back at him sadly. "And I look up, I look up on my knees and out of luck, I look up."

"It is all right, my son," she says to him and the pain of that moment ebbs away for just a fraction of a minute. She rests her warm hand over his cooler one and she smiles a little, all over again.

"It is all right." She says again, soothingly. Her voice brings warmth inside his chest and he can't help but suddenly reach out to hug her.

"I yearn for what we used to have, for a reality that is no more," he whispered into her shoulder, heaving the breath from his lungs as if he would never get the chance again. "If I could do it all again…" he trailed off, tears rolling down his cheeks.

"All we have is now and everything that has happened has brought us to here," she responded and he knew that she would. "I would not change a thing, my son." He knew she would remind him less of the life they once lived but rather how everything had righted itself in the end. Despite the time between their deaths, they were now together again, reunited. They were no longer tied to their old memories of being one way or the other, of thinking they had to be playing separate and opposing roles rather they were connected with the wisdom that the afterlife could provide them.

The longing of all those years to be with his mother again had shaped so much of Loki's perspective. But here he was now with her again. And that is all that mattered.

Of course, that was the lie he chose to tell himself that morning. Because it wasn't just his mother's passing that affected him so, but the love of his life that ached in his bones and made his heart sink with worry. He was never supposed to fall in love. Not least of all to a mortal. But the man had stolen his heart without ever asking. They had loved each other so deeply, even when everything was set against them. Even when everyone's eyes looked to them with disdain, Loki knew he loved and he loved madly. He knew these dreams were of his partner, how time was running slow for the two of them, how they were worlds apart unaware of the other's continued existence. He loved a mortal still living his life a world down below him. And although he wished for them to be reunited again, he knew what that would mean for the mortal, and he didn't wish death upon anyone anymore, even if it was the love of his life that he so desperately wished to hug and love and sink his form into again. He didn't wish death upon him; he couldn't, because the mortal didn't deserve it. Even Loki of all beings didn't deserve it.

But death had come for him all the same. He had faced death the moment he chose to save Thor's life from the Mad Titan. And he would do it all over again, not making a single choice different, because it had brought him back into his mother's arms once more.

"You miss him," Frigga observed, her compassion reflective in her warm eyes as she gazed upon her second son.

"Dearly and completely." Loki responded, hiccupping to himself, holding onto a clump of her robe for comfort. "Does this pain ever end?" He asked voice low, green eyes absorbed in hers.

"Only when you meet again," Frigga replied, clasping an open palm to the side of Loki's face.

"Why do I wish it so even now, mother?" Loki asked in frustration, his emotions running haywire in him, a chaos forming that he so distinctly wished would leave him be.

"Because you love, Loki. You love and you will always love. Time matters not when it comes to the heart. But he will come sooner than you realize. When it is his time, he will come. But not before, my son." She brushed a lock of raven hair back behind his ear as she pulled him into another tight embrace.

"How do I wait for him?" Loki asked slowly, carefully measuring his words as though he were handling missiles.

"You watch over him with your grace above until he comes. You find patience within your soul to allow him to live as he so chooses upon his realm. And when it is his time to perish, you hold onto hope that he will pass on to this realm and meet with you again." Frigga smiled once more, politely and with care. "They always do."

The Allfather entered Loki's line of vision and he knew that meant it was time to let Frigga wander again into the mist. He looked upon her with consideration before placing a hand to her face and wiping away a fallen eyelash.

"Make a wish," he whispered.

"It already came true," she answered, fading into the white background as if she had never even been there at all.

However, he knew she had and that's the memory he kept hidden in his grasp until the light washed over him as well and he vanished, temporarily.

It was a cloudy day when he came. The trickster experienced such pride and pain watching his love down below sacrifice himself to the snap that righted his world.

He cried when his mortal's second love told him, "Tony, it's okay. You can rest now."

He felt his heart break in his own chest, he felt the residual pain in his love's form slowly melt away as his body broke down and his soul departed.

Loki wiped the tears from his green eyes as they propelled back into his line of vision, salty and sweet, causing his eyes to water more.

Loki held himself, rocking back and forth in an effort to calm down.

You can rest now.

You can rest now.

You can rest now.

How divine yet heartbreaking were those words. Loki had been waiting five years for Stark to return to him and in that time the mortal had tried to move on the best he could and start a family-without him, yes, but with him all the same.

If Loki had learned anything in his years alive it was that the ones we love are always carried with us even when their bodies and their journeys in life end. Their souls, their memories, their lives always live on.

Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, and Steve Rogers-they were no different to these rules.

They were the original Avengers team. They were the superheroes who risked everything for the path of the greater good.

Loki didn't hate Stark for moving on. In fact, he was proud of the inventor for having the strength to.

Loki only ever wanted Stark to live a happy and healthy life. He was glad that even if it was without his physical form that Stark had managed to do just that. He had put down the bottle, married a lovely woman, had a child as bright and dear as Morgan. Loki loved her even if he hardly knew her. He didn't have to know her to know how lucky she was to have Tony Stark as a father.

His love had risked everything for the world to be okay again. Loki had watched mesmerized with glee as Thanos had dusted into the wind.

The Avengers had won. If Loki could have been there, he would have fought valiantly alongside them. Even in spirit, he felt that he had, somewhat.

Everything was going to be all right…It was only going to be without the billionaire.

Loki's love for him had never wavered in all these years, yet it was his spirit now that did as he watched his love struggle for breath. He wanted only to hold him, to caress his cheek, to whisper how beautiful and wonderful the life beyond would be. Stark wouldn't have to feel pain again, not physically, not even quite emotionally, he'd be able to love and laugh and be free. He would still get the chance to be held, to be comforted, to be loved. Loki only wished to love him, again; even more than he had the first time.

Loki watched as Stark's soul vacated his physical form as his brown eyes stayed open. He was in his armor when he passed and even the glow in his chest dimmed into darkness.

"I love you, Tony Stark," Loki whispered beneath his breath as he felt the sun on the back of his own armor heat his skin in a way that wasn't quite unpleasant. "Together again we shall be." He uttered softly as he closed his green eyes and felt the spirit of the inventor shift into sparkles of glitter and light as it floated up into the dark sky. "Together again."

And like that wish he, too, vanished.

"Aughawagh!" He screamed the moment he woke up, thrusting air into his lungs as he bolted upright in the soft blankets, a silhouette standing in the corner that he did not miss. "Oh, what the hell? What happened?"

"You're dead," the velvety voice mused, coming out into the light.

Tony's breath immediately stilled in his throat.

"Loki," he gasped. "Is it really you?"

Loki smiled warmly, only a small amount of mischief lingering in his eyes.

"The one and only," Loki replied, easing himself down onto the bed.

Without another word the trickster pulled the inventor into a cozy and tight embrace.

"I've missed you so," Loki said in his ear and Tony swallowed his regret, his concern piling up to the sky.

"I've missed you too, Reindeer Games." His vision clouded with his emotions as he nestled his cheek into the crook of Loki's neck. "I'm so sorry, Loki. I-"

"No need to be. You did all that you could and you had Morgan and she is amazing. There is no need to apologize." Loki outstretched his arms and looked into Tony's brown orbs. "You moved on the best you could. I am not angry about that, I'm proud of how far you've come instead." He smiled at the inventor, placing his lips to Stark's forehead. "You saved your realm. You won. And now you are here with me again. And I am grateful for that-although I'd wish for different circumstances."

"You've seriously been waiting? All this time?" Tony asked carefully, feeling indignant and perplexed.

"It's not like I had much else to do," Loki quipped then laughed, so purely and good-heartedly. "If I had to wait for you for all eternity, I would do that, just to be with you again."

Tony nodded, thinking slowly, trying to absorb everything that was moving too fast.

"But, no offense, I-I moved on without you. You and the kid. I-I just left you all behind like you were never even there to begin with." Tony's eyes betrayed his guilt and shame that had been harvesting all these years inside his chest.

"No, Tony. You moved forwards because you had to. You had to. And that's okay. We all have to move on. We pick up the pieces of what we can salvage and we move forwards." Loki held Tony's face in his hands; green eyes alight like a crackling fire. "There will always be remnants of you. A piece of you will always live on. In everything you left behind, in all that you were, to millions of people. Your impact will never be forgotten. So don't dismiss it. You will always be there for them in their hearts and in their minds."

Tony let out the breath he'd been holding and kissed Loki passionately as if it had been forever-and in some respects it had-and Loki kissed him back just as strongly.

With the fading light, they held each other and as the sun descended, they became one again.

He felt his cool hand sinking into the avenues of his shoulder. Tony looked up and saw his shadow looking back at him with his eyes the color of blades of grass.

"Night has always pushed up day." Loki bent his lanky limbs and sat comfortably down beside Tony in the tall grass. "You must know life to see decay."

"But I won't rot. I won't rot." Tony answered, tears in his eyes again. He had been spending most of his days mourning over all that he had lost, all that he was going to miss out on. He mourned for the life he would no longer get the chance to live. He mourned for Morgan to grow older without him, just as he had to do from his own parents passing. He hadn't wished that pain on anyone and he certainly wasn't starting now.

It was with patience and kindness that Loki stayed by his side through all the greatness and all the terribleness. Because letting go was a process only Stark could master alone and Loki had had his time to accept his.

He placed his hand over Tony's and felt the way his skin folded and calloused. He felt where it was rough and where it was soft. He gazed at him with love in his eyes and he caressed Tony's face with certain calm.

"I love you." He said so softly that it was as though a flower petal had only skimmed the center of a lake.

Tony, with effort, pried his eyes away from watching his funeral commence and whispered back, "I love you, too." He opened his mouth to say more, to do more, to be more but he found himself instead mouthing, "Not this mind and not this heart, I won't rot."

Loki smiled at him then, his eyes twinkling in the rays of sun that suddenly fell around them.

He stood quickly; hand outstretched to the inventor, echoing what Tony felt was something in his soul that had laid in wait since the day he died.

"And I took you by the hand. And we stood tall. And remembered our own land, what we lived for."

Tony's eyes were clouded again but his lips rose ever so slightly at the ends and he made a jab at how sappy his demigod was being and nothing felt closer than a dream come true than that.

He spun Tony in his armor, the metal and leather between the two of them glinting in the risen sun. He held Tony just a fraction tighter than deemed necessary but he loved the mortal and he would show this love and care for him until the moment they disappeared permanently around the corner.

They were walking down a long, pink flushed hallway. The walls were static: shifting from being present and real and concrete to being evaporated and nonexistent and papery thin.

They were holding hands, Tony's slightly clammy which he felt completely aware of (and perhaps too self-conscious over) and Loki's which were cool yet not as freezing as Tony had remembered them being. He supposed it was a death thing, an afterlife thing, something. The rules hadn't exactly been explained to him and he hadn't had the care within him yet to ask. Instead, he took comfort in the way that their hands had a memory of the other imprinted upon them, fitting like two pieces to a puzzle, perfectly and in sync.

He felt his heart flutter in his chest as they neared the oceanfront. The white sandy beach was comprised of such infinitely small granules of sand and Tony admired the way they snaked in between his toes and melted into the bottoms of his feet. It was so real and so tangible that Tony had a hard time remembering that he was really even dead. This…this realm didn't feel like death. It was, it was another chance at living, he guessed.

Nothing really made much sense here, he knew. It didn't make sense that his life could have ended on Earth and yet continued moving forwards in this realm. He knew he was dead, he knew that Loki was dead, too, yet here they were in a realm so unbelievably real that he forgot what feeling alive in the previous life was like versus what feeling dead here was like.

The two terms seemed so interchangeable-but Morgan was not here. Pepper was not here. That's what made this world different; the fact that the loves of his life-of his other life-were not there to enjoy this time with him.

He couldn't help but feel shitty disappointment and a lingering uncertainty within his soul to be feeling that way.

Shouldn't he be grateful that he was reunited with his demigod? Why did the pain and the ache that he had carried in his chest for all those years feel foreign and unshapen now that he was dead?

He couldn't make sense of it. He didn't exactly sleep in this realm, he wasn't even sure that he could have if he were even able to. Time was a fickle creature, it came and passed in moments-one minute he'd be upright the next he'd be lying down in completely separate sceneries.

Nothing worked the same here. Time was just so abstract a concept to this realm that nobody bothered to give pamphlets to read or instructions on what to do about moving into the light and going…someplace else.

It was aggravating and irritating of a process but Tony was slightly afraid to mention these feelings to Loki. Loki seemed so content here, by his side again, and he feared that if he voiced his concerns that the demigod would take offense to it and that he'd become upset. That he'd feel personally violated or attacked by the billionaire for Tony to want to just stay here forever and wait with baited breath before another of his loves came to the other side.

Was it possible? Was it possible to love more than one person at a time? Tony had thought so for ages, but now he wasn't so sure. It was so complicated, with having a daughter in his other life, having Pep as a wife, having so much left to live there in their little cottage…

Sometimes he questioned whether he had made the right choice. Deep down he knew that he had, it was worth everything to sacrifice himself in the way he did at the very end, so that everyone beyond him could have their families and have their lives and have their peace. It just didn't make the pain and hurt that he felt he had willingly placed onto his family hurt any less. And how could he possibly voice these concerns to his other love, to anyone beyond his own skull? It was preposterous!

He had done the right thing. He had done the only thing. It was him, even though it shouldn't have had to be. Life wasn't fair-it didn't play by the rules. Life played dirty. Life was…everything.

But now he was here. Wherever here was, that's where he now existed. It felt-god, it felt like the only place where he even existed. Maybe what happened, everything that had happened previously, was the real dream; maybe this was the life he was meant to live here. Maybe he had woken up from his dream of living on planet Earth to live instead in this realm, wherever that was in the massive expanse that was the galaxy. Maybe this was the reality that he had never fully been aware of.

"And now I cling to what I knew," he found himself saying aloud, even before the words registered in his brain. "I saw exactly what was true. But, oh no more."

Loki, god, he had forgotten that the demigod was even there, squeezed his hand encouragingly.

It suddenly dawned for the first time on Tony that there were no projects to be built here. No new suits of armor for his hands to tinker with, no projectile to defend, just fading scenes and love and… peace. There was peace here. A peace he had rarely ever encountered in his previous life.

Maybe this life, if it could be called that, was the life where he could freely be himself, in all aspects of that nature, with the god he once loved deeply.

Did he still feel the same way about the trickster? Did time erode his love for the demigod no matter what their past history had been?

And worse, if it had, could Loki have the strength within him to let Tony go?

He didn't know. He didn't know the answers to these questions and the worry that that riddled himself with was almost enough to take his breath away.

But for the moment, Loki was staring back at him and he just barely heard his demigod reply, "That's why I hold. That's why I hold with all I have, that's why I hold."

For a moment, a fraction of a millisecond, Tony was confronted with the image of his funeral again. His stomach churned at the notion, his memory of his final moments were blurry but he found himself uttering aloud (as though his mouth were no longer controlled by his brain), "I won't die alone and be left there. Well, I guess I'll just go home, oh god, knows where."

Loki stopped walking-suddenly the world had shifted around them again and now they stood atop a large hill. He looked sternly at the inventor then squeezed his hand a little bit again and whispered quietly but with purpose, "Because death is just so full and man so small."

Tony felt his breath be taken away all over again. He wanted to be flippant, he wanted to crack a joke but the air never dared to come back to his lips. Instead, he opened up, he shared a vulnerability, he shared it because… because he felt safe with Loki. He felt safe with him like he had all those years ago. And he knew suddenly then that he could love more than one individual in his lifetime; that it was absolutely okay to love more than one individual. He knew at that exact moment that people come and go in life, some staying until the end and some only for a chapter or two.

When Loki wasn't there, because he had died and okay, maybe Tony still resented that the purple nutsack had been the cause of that, Pep had been and that had held him over for a while.

But Tony felt the safest with Loki, and it was right now that he remembered that. He remembered again how much he loved the demigod, no matter how much he had begged of the god to cut his hair or actually take the time to wash the dishes, he loved him, fully and completely. He'd like to think that they had been in love before and maybe Pep, maybe being with her and having Morgan, maybe that was his purpose for that life. And maybe for this new life, for this second chance at changing things, of making them different, maybe Loki could be the one to help Tony fold and unfold, care and be loved; to be safe with, to be not alone with.

So Tony replied as naturally as he could as though he were reciting a new nanotech mechanism: "Well I'm scared of what's behind and what's before."

Loki's head imperceptibly tilted to the left. His eyes wandered over Tony's form with such care, taking in every line and every fold of his clothes. He ran his fingers down his shirt, down his pants then back to his face. Tony felt so utterly naked without his armor yet it wasn't uncomfortable. Rather, it was like the demigod was seeing him for him for the very first time.

Loki, taking a page from Thor's book, cradled the back of Tony's neck with lightness and care. His eyes narrowed.

"There will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears. And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears. Get over your hill and see what you find there, with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair."

The air around them shifted, becoming lighter, brighter. Tony felt like the hands of time were shifting around them, too fast, too much all at once. He swung out an arm as if he could prevent things from unfolding the way that they were.

"Wait! I'm not ready to go," he cried out emotionally.

Loki regarded him regally. "We never are. But it will be okay. I am here with you. I am here as we go. You are not alone, anymore, my love."

And they locked eyes for a moment, a long one, green eyes and brown eyes and Tony felt a sense of calm-perhaps even forced calm-run over him and he felt safe and okay and like everything was going to be all right.

Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the beyond; maybe this is what everything had been leading up to.

So he did what felt most natural, and he leaned forwards into Loki's sense of personal space and placed his warm forehead onto his partner's cooler one. And he whisked his lips past the trickster's before settling them there upon his skin and kissing him deeply.

And with the light that surrounded them again and took them away to somewhere else, he felt well, he felt peace, he felt whole. And so did Loki, finally, for the first time in years.

They disappeared together again, moving forwards into the next chapter of their stories, together…forever.

A/N: Heyyyy guys! Welcome back to another new story, just a one-shot! I was emotionally WRECKED after seeing Avengers: Endgame the first time and needed to cope with some fanfic as many others were too! I thought of this idea and actually borrowed the basic plot line of a novel I want to write (since that original story is all set in the afterlife, hence borrowing that idea to this fic here) as well as wanting to write a new one-shot fic where Loki IS there fighting alongside everyone else in the final battle, but that might happen a few months from now (the writing process that is).

Any who, I haven't really been writing much lately but I will probably have some new chapters up for D&D, S, ALU and the like within the next month! I have potentially gotten a job so that may get me to write either more or less, I'm not sure yet ahaha.

All song lyrics in Italics were from "After the Storm" by Mumford and Sons which I DO NOT own, as well as Loki and Tony whom I do not own. Just borrowed for some fun and rommmmance. ;] FrostIron is my one true love so I had to do something for them for the end. Let me know in a review what you thought of this one! Something different from me as I hope to also bring in some other new stories, too! :] PS I hate that my really cool page breaks didn't make it into the final cut for but I hope that they'll work over at AO3! :D

Written: 4/28, 4/29, 5/10 & 5/14/19

Thank you SO MUCH for reading! Check out my other stories if you want some Loki/Avengers fun! :D Bye guys!