A/N:
1) Sincere thanks for reviews and/or encouragement goes to: Dazja, RoseGlass, MilkyWayGalaxy, helenxxx, Maia2, Foxyperv, wolftattoo, psycobookcollector, and Satosen. As usual, I'll respond via PM to anyone I can (might take me a couple days though. Sorry).
Also, thanks for all the faves, alerts, etc, it is most encouraging.
2) I'm very sorry for the long wait. Work, family issues and an AWOL muse have been taking their toll. To make things even more complicated, a dear and physically somewhat disabled relative who loves gardening (on the big prickly tree scale instead of little flower beds) has enlisted my help, and I don't have the heart to turn them down.
3) So here is an update finally, sorry it is short. Muse problems. One more thing is: I completely love the Holmes cannon (have a copy in fact in every room I'm likely to read in) but since for purposes of this fic I am assuming that in my universe my version of AGOS is historical, Loki might have reason not to be too thrilled. I'm not expressing my own views on the books.
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In a flash of white-hot rage, Loki hurls the tome at the window, snarling when the glass doesn't break, and the book only bounces back toward him, pages flipping open as it falls.
The anguish rises up again full-force as he bends to place it back on the shelf, and the last lines of the "Final Problem" swim blurrily before his eyes.
It feels as if it's taunting him, and though intellectually he knows that the book only opened there because of how long he'd spent staring at those words, it doesn't lessen the pain so he puts his fist through the window, before pacing back to grab the offending book and send it flying in a perfect arc through the air and out the hole he punched in the glass.
Then with nothing left to vent his rage on, Loki sinks down, back against the couch, cradling his injured hand to his chest, and involuntarily, irrationally, he pillows his head on his knees and breaks down crying, because the truths of the detective's life have been whitewashed, especially with how he'd met his end.
Were A.C. Doyle alive, Loki would have taken it up with him, would have demanded to know who had edited Watson's journals and changed the timeline – and the guilty party would rue the day they ever though of it – but they are long dead and it doesn't matter any more.
And though Loki is certain that there was no malice involved, because people need to believe in heroes and who wants a hero who can bleed, be severely injured and die? Who wants a hero who knew that he was going to be defeated? Who wants the truth when one can just change the timelines and edit out the proofs of human vulnerability and give the public a man who is untouchable and undefeatable, even in the face of death itself?
Why tell them that he died preventing a war and let humanity understand what it had lost by being so willing to give in to mindless bloodshed when one can spare everyone the moral conflicts and lessen the stakes, only to pull off a miraculous survival and then write past events as having taken place after the hero's resurrection?
For nearly anyone else, it would have been a fitting tribute, but not to Holmes who had loved truth above all things, not to the detective who understood the meaning of sacrifice and saw the world for what it was while never stopping trying to make sure that it could become something better. Not for the mortal man who knew only too well his own physical limitations for all that he chose to disregard them in the name of justice.
Loki knows he doesn't deserve a say in any of this, but it hurts even more because had Holmes not been willingly so endangered by his chosen profession Loki would not have admired him as he did - because the mortal's life which ultimately he traded in for the world was made all the more precious by virtue of its inherent fragility – and as much as he'd feared how it would inevitably end, he'd also loved the mortal for it.
Holmes deserved better.
He deserves better in this life, but despite the freedom of information in this modern age, in the end, people believe what they want to believe. Loki has seen the press-reports on Tony Stark.
Buried in his own grief, Loki doesn't realize that Thor is standing beside him until the Thunderer speaks, voice uncharacteristically soft, apparently having witnessed more than Loki would have ever liked him to see:
"Will you never tell him, brother?"
He wants to lash out, to snarl at his not-brother and be left alone in his misery, but the words die in his throat when the Thunderer drops to the floor beside him, pulling Loki close as if they are children once more – and tired, so tired, of this crushing guilt and desolation, he clings to his once-sibling like a lifeline, shedding tears that can never make any difference and yet must be released nonetheless, choking out finally:
"I can't. "
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