Five long happy years they'd been together. Well, mostly happy. Tony was fifty-three now. He was getting older, while Loki remained suspended in time by his own immortality; hundreds of thousands of years later, Loki would be all that was left of Anthony Edward Stark. No one expected to see Tony make it to sixty. That didn't matter, though. He still had time and better still, he had Loki. That was all that mattered.
Four times they fought. They were bad fights. Yelling matches that sometimes led to swinging fists and broken whiskey bottles. They were harsh and loud and painfully honest. Once it was about Tony's frail mortality, the next Loki's unbreakable immortality.
They all ended in tears.
Three times they apologized. That last one, they never spoke of again. That one ended with a blade buried in Tony's stomach and Loki's agonized tears. They'd both been drunk. They vowed that there would never again be a fight like that, and that they would never speak of it again.
Two times they'd shared their stories. Once Tony's, the second time Loki's. There were tears and kisses and the desperate touch of skin on skin. They made love that night to the sounds of the snow storm raging outside, and the flames dancing in the fireplace.
One time Loki was too late. But then, one time was all it had taken. A sword had been pierced through red and gold armor, straight into the Man of Iron's heart.
One mistake and Anthony was gone.
One time when Loki moved too slow.
One moment when the god moved through time.
He'd found Anthony and held him close as the mortal choked on his own blood, and felt all those minutes he'd thought they'd have tick away as if they'd never been there at all.
One last touch.
One last kiss.
One last breath.
One last beat of a heart turned to iron.
Time stopped again, and with it, Anthony's heart. The light from the arc reactor flickered and died, and Loki no longer had anything to guide him forward, no light in the darkness of this wretched place.
Anthony, his mortal, had not failed to deliver one last crushing blow.
He'd showed everyone that, while they were ice, he was fire, taking with him everything in his path, drawing everyone to his warmth, a comforting dance or a roaring blaze.
Anthony Edward Stark had lived until he was sixty-one.
