Memento Mori

Summary: Of the many people capable of carrying the fate of the universe on their shoulders by travelling back in time, Loki would have been the first choice of exactly nobody. With no allies, no plan and nobody on his side, Loki will just have to wing it.

Or: That awkward moment when you've completed your redemption arc, but nobody else got the memo.

Chapter 18

Loki and Thor were welcomed to the Milano by an enraged roar and a chunk of scrap metal flying their way. They dodged – barely – and took in the chaos of half a dozen people yelling at and threatening each other.

"Oh dear," Loki muttered, and he considered whether he ought to have taken his chances with the Avengers, after all.

The Milano looked as though a horde of Chitauri had trampled through. Dents and cracks covered the walls and raised the question whether they were safely on a planet or seconds away from being sucked into space. (Again.)

At the center of the ship was Valkyrie, keeping the Hulk in a chokehold with Stormbreaker while the Guardians were scattered, pointing their weapons around in various states of panic and anger.

"– need to calm down already! Stop making a fuss if you don't want us to–"

"Seriously?! You show up here with an ogre and your enormous axe and expect us to calm down?!"

"You're the one who made him transform!" Valkyrie grunted as Hulk tried to shake her off.

"I shall slay the ogre in the name of my family," Drax proclaimed, and threw himself into the fray bare handed.

"Drax! You moron, stop trying to–" Gamora cut herself off and snatched up Groot so he wasn't able to join the wrestling pile. "Groot! Don't even think about it!"

Thor couldn't seem to make up his mind about who he was supposed to fight. "What's going on?" he called, somehow making his voice carry over the shouting.

"What's going on?!" Rocket screamed. "I'll tell you what's going on! One of your little friends turned into a gigantic monster and started taking apart our ship!"

Valkyrie blew a strand of her hair out of her face. "Only because you stabbed him!"

"I'd hardly call it a stabbing. A friendly poke, if anything. What was I supposed to do?! You just popped up out of nowhere!"

"You're lucky he didn't already–" Valkyrie's sentence cut off in a yelp as Hulk's patience ran out. He growled and pried Stormbreaker's handle away from his neck, straining against Valkyrie's Asgardian strength.

Thor leaped forward before he had the chance to free himself.

"Hulk! It's been a while, my friend."

Loki ignored the taming session that followed. The Guardians relaxed marginally once they realized that Hulk was listening to Thor – albeit reluctantly so. It was their own fault for having released the Hulk in the first place, so Loki felt no sympathy for the damage their ship had taken.

No longer preoccupied with the rampaging monster, Gamora found him at the back of the ship. Groot gave a cheerful wave and Gamora raised her eyebrow, holding out her hand so Groot was able to climb over.

"Did you succeed?" she asked, watching Groot as he climbed up Loki's arm.

Loki hesitated. "We found the mind stone," he replied, and he didn't elaborate.

Gamora gave him a nod and turned back to her team.

By the time Hulk had calmed down and allowed Banner to resurface, Groot had finished his ascent and perched on Loki's shoulder. He found no braid to hold onto (Loki had not yet deemed it important to take care of his battle-disheveled hair) and decided to remedy the fact by tying clumsy, messy knots. They would be a chore to comb out, later.

Loki pressed his lips together and kept the frown off his face when Thor turned his back on their (now significantly calmer) allies and joined Loki – and Groot – in their corner of the ship.

The two of them sat in silence. Groot paused in his efforts to turn his hair into a Neadling's nest to briefly take in the newcomer.

"We made it."

Loki fought not to scoff. "Only barely."

"We killed two of Thanos' followers," Thor said.

"Supposedly," Loki gave back. "We cannot know for certain Proxima has died."

Thor drew his features into an unhappy frown. "You're cross with me."

"And what could have possibly given you that impression?" Had Loki's voice been any more scathing, it would have scalded his throat.

Thor's lips tightened. "Is this about what happened on Proxima's ship? What did you expect me to do, Loki?"

"I expected you to have my back," Loki snapped. Frustration flowed over in his chest before he could dim it in. They could have won the fight easily, had they only worked together the way they used to. How were they supposed to defeat Thanos when they could not manage to keep it together against a mere goon?

"You didn't exactly give me much to work with," Thor replied. "If we'd had the time to agree on a plan–"

"It never stopped you before."

Thor's frown deepened. "I don't know what you'd like me to say. Did you truly expect me to be able to piece together your plan when the one thing you told me was to 'play along'?"

"You had no trouble playing along against the Dark Elves," Loki said. He'd trusted Loki with not only his own, but also with Jane's life. How was this situation any different?

Thor looked at him with an odd glance. "You fought against the Dark Elves alone, Loki."

Loki clamped his mouth shut. His eyes dropped to the ground before he could stop them.

"Whatever has happened in the other reality," Thor continued, "I don't remember it."

"There were other occasions," Loki insisted. "We've fought together many times. Since we were children."

"Maybe so." Thor's lips were pinched. "But before all this, the last time I have offered you to join hands in battle your answer was to stab me."

Right. In New York, during the battle, Thor had attempted to change Loki's mind – and he'd retaliated with a blade to Thor's stomach.

Loki had allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of familiarity. He'd allowed himself to pretend as though nothing had changed between them. Or rather, to pretend that everything had. That they'd mutually reached the point they had in the other timeline, after their adventure on Sakaar.

He'd been stupid to believe they could simply go back to how things were. Thor didn't even remember what they'd once had.

"All this time," Loki whispered, thinking of banter and affectionate gestures and Thor calling him 'brother', "our entire journey after the Dark Elves. Were you just... pretending? Fooling me?"

Loki knew that Thor had a more manipulative side. His brother used it all the time, making other people assume that he was more oblivious, more gullible, more foolheaded than he actually was. Loki hadn't considered finding himself on the receiving end of it.

Thor threw him a startled glance. "No. Of course not." He hesitated. "Everything that you told me – about the future, about... about our bond. I wanted to believe it. I do believe it."

"What then? What made you hesitate?"

Thor's expression grew pained. "Do you truly need me to say it?"

"Perhaps I do," Loki said, pressing out the words past the constricting feeling in his chest.

Thor closed his eyes and turned his head away from Loki. "Before this," he started, "before all of it, the last time I saw you was in the dungeons, taunting me. Denying our brotherhood. Denying even mother."

It hadn't been Loki's proudest moment. Not when Frigga had died before he'd been able to make amends.

"Before that, you'd murdered Midgardians and attempted to seize their realm for the simple goal of causing me pain." Thor paused. "You tell me stories of a future where we've learned to trust each other as we once did, and I want to believe them with all my heart. But to me, they're just that. Stories. You cannot expect me to change my state of mind because of them alone."

Loki swallowed painfully. "They may be stories to you. But I haven't made them up. I've lived through them. I've earned your trust."

"Maybe you've earned his trust," Thor said, his voice low and apologetic. "Your Thor's. But not mine. Not yet."

"What do you want me to do?" There was only so much Loki could do to keep himself from escalating the conversation into something even worse. He felt a pull on his hair and plucked Groot off and back onto his shoulder before he could continue his ascent.

Thor considered his words. "Give me time," he settled on. "That was what the other Thor had, right? You had years between you that haven't happened yet. Allow me the same."

Loki didn't answer, and Thor took it as the end of their conversation. He went to rejoin the Guardians and left Loki behind with bitterness swelling in his chest.

He'd gone through so much before he'd decided to come back in time. He'd almost died for Thor. He deserved his brother's trust, and he deserved to be on equal terms with him. He'd earned it.

Except this Thor didn't remember.

Loki tried to think back to the time he'd almost succeeded in conquering Midgard. He tried to imagine an older, different Thor appearing out of nowhere, attempting to claim a sense of brotherhood that past Loki had violently rejected. Would he have allowed visions of the future to change his mind, just like that?

Loki clenched his teeth, knowing the answer and wishing it was different. Trust didn't work like that. It wasn't gained from nothing, and Loki's progress was set back perhaps not to zero, but considerably.

Did this mean he'd have to die for Thor? Again? Did this mean he had to prove himself, over and over until Thor finally arrived at the point Loki had reached long ago? Loki wasn't sure if he had the willpower for that. Along with everything else he had to accomplish, he didn't know whether he had the energy to even try.

"Why did I have to come back?" Loki watched Groot slid down into the crook of his elbow, and Loki scowled at him. "Anybody else would have been a better choice. Why did it have to be me?"

Groot let his legs swing back and forth, and had no answer to offer.

Odin had done his best to avoid Frigga ever since he had failed to capture Loki and Thor on Nidavellir. The thought of confronting her about her actions filled him with apprehension.

As Asgard's king, he could allow himself to postpone the inevitable, but not to forgo it altogether.

"I know the part you played in our sons' escape," he told her on the rare occasion that they met without either of them making a prompt retreat.

Frigga – headstrong that she was – refused to let him chase her out of their quarters. "I haven't gone against your orders."

Odin's lips twisted into a frown. "Perhaps I should not be surprised that they continue to evade my capture. Loki takes after you in a great many ways."

"If you're trying to make me feel guilty about my actions, you will not succeed." She looked up from her journal. "Loki does take after me. I dearly hope you had not intended the fact as an insult."

Odin waved off the accusation. Frigga ought to know him better than that. "I had hoped to have my wife's support. Considering it is either me or him, I suppose it is too much to ask."

Frigga raised her chin. "You will not succeed," she repeated. "You can try it all you like."

"Are you not concerned at all?" Odin felt his words dip into exasperation. "Knowing that somewhere out there, the infinity stones are being gathered? Doesn't it concern you that you cannot tell what he intends to do with them?"

Frigga paused, laying down her journal with care in the movement that her expression lacked. "You feel strongly about the stones," she said. "Too strongly to have learned of them merely from stories."

Odin forced himself not to stiffen. "They are dangerous, Frigga. How could I not feel strongly about seeing them fall into the wrong hands?"

"There are hundreds of stories about world-ending artifacts and sources of power. You have not made a habit out of believing every myth you stumble across. This is different." She paused, raising her gaze to look at him properly. "This seems personal."

Odin clenched his teeth. His eyes slid away from Frigga's before he could stop them.

"You say that Loki takes after me, and you're right," Frigga continued. "Perhaps what you're afraid of is that he takes after you, as well."

Odin flinched. The action prompted no satisfaction from his wife. Only thoughtfulness.

Frigga knew that there were secrets Odin kept from her. She'd never been happy about it, but she hadn't despised him for it, either.

"Loki has made mistakes in the past," Frigga said when Odin could not bring himself to answer. "Perhaps you should consider that he is capable of atoning for them, just the same."

She made to leave and paused in her tracks before she reached the door. "Thor had a reason to deem Loki trustworthy and offer his support in this quest. This is no longer only about Loki. You need to decide whether to distrust or put your faith in both."

Odin didn't call after her when she left.

He did not ask Heimdall about his sons' whereabouts. He did not send more guards after them, like he'd planned.

Odin thought of Frigga's words and did not know whether to love or envy her for the gift of knowing their family better than he ever could.

His figurative heart merging with an infinity stone had consequences Tony could not have possibly dreamed of.

Were his life a comic book, he would have surely started shooting lasers out of his fingers a day or so after the stone had deemed him its next unwilling host – at the very least, it could have had the courtesy of granting him something basic like superhuman strength. Or durability. Seriously. He wasn't picky.

Instead, exactly nothing seemed to have changed other than the constant buzzing in his chest that was just different enough from his mind-stone-less arc reactor to be noticeable.

After several days of not spontaneously developing the power of flight and the lack of another appearance by Thor and his brother, Tony had no choice but to accept that for the moment, this was his new normal. He put on layers until he could no longer see the yellow glow of his chest and tried to ignore the stone otherwise.

His first clue that everything wasn't quite as normal as he wished came in the form of a not-as-uncomfortable-as-it-could-have-been heart to heart with Steve.

Actually, scratch that.

In retrospect, his first clue had been passing Sam in the halls and catching him about to replace all of Clint's chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with a low fat, gluten-free kind. It hadn't occurred to him how he could have possibly come to that conclusion on his own and he went on with his day none the wiser.

Hence, the heart to heart with Steve.

"Hey," he said, foregoing his usual quip and dropping down next to Steve. "You doing alright?"

Steve looked up from his sketchbook and threw Tony a startled look. "Uh. Yeah? Yeah, I... Of course. I'm good."

Tony hummed. "You want to talk about it?"

"What makes you think there's something to talk about?"

Tony shrugged. "You've got that look on your face. I just had a feeling."

Steve held his gaze for a long, drawn-out heartbeat. He sighed, letting his shoulders slump as though they held an invisible weight.

"I didn't sleep well last night," he admitted. "I had a... a nightmare, I guess. And afterwards I just... I kept..."

"Remembering?"

"Yeah."

Every member of their team had become a hero in unique circumstances and out of different motivations. The one thing they had in common were the issues they were left with.

"Want to talk about it?" Tony offered, thinking of nights he'd spent in cold sweat in his workshop, too stubborn to seek help from anyone.

In contrast to him, Steve didn't hesitate long before taking him up on the offer.

"How'd you know?" he asked afterwards, breaking the comfortable silence that had formed in the wake of their conversation. "How'd you know I was having a bad day?"

Tony shrugged. "I've got plenty of them of my own," he said, and didn't consider that there was more at play.

The final clue arrived in the form of an interaction Tony would learn to think back on fondly and with no small amount of satisfaction.

They'd all moved to the living room for some take-out, Tony – not willing to interrupt what he'd started – typing on his notebook and listening to the others exchanging stories.

The most recent batch was all about missions Cap and the spies had carried out. Tony seriously contemplated carrying out his revenge for ruining spy movies for him forever with their far superior anecdotes.

"We only stayed for a couple days," Steve said, wrapping up his latest story about a covert mission in Bosnia. "Our contacts would have kicked us over the border themselves if we hadn't left when we did."

Clint snorted, and Natasha's mouth curved into a smirk. "The last time I was in Bosnia, three separate government agencies were after my head."

Tony kept typing on his notebook. "Please. You've never been to Bosnia."

Nobody spoke.

The silence went on long enough to make Tony raise his head and meet his teammates' widened eyes – most notably, Natasha's. "What?"

"Nat?" Clint raised an eyebrow.

"It was Croatia," Natasha admitted. "Just before the border to Bosnia."

"Did you seriously just catch Black Widow telling a lie?" Clint raised his voice incredulously.

Tony squirmed in his seat, his notebook forgotten. "You must have told me," he said, meeting Natasha's gaze with a frown. "You told me, right? At one point?"

Natasha's silence said it all.

Tony's brain was an inventor's. Given enough pieces, it puzzled together scraps until it made something whole. It puzzled together something that made sense.

The pieces were all there, and as long as he allowed it to, Tony's brain took care of the rest.

"Guys," he said, "this isn't the first time something like this happened."

"No offence, but I very much doubt you managed to call out Nat on a lie before this point," Clint said.

"That's not what I–" Tony caught himself. "I mean, yeah. Probably not. But I knew exactly when you were trying to sneak into the training rooms when your ankle was sprained."

"Should have been more careful," Clint muttered.

He had been kind of obvious about it.

Fine then. Change of tactic.

"Steve," Tony said, pinning his teammate with his gaze. "Lie to me."

Steve stared at him. "What?"

"Go on. Tell a lie. Try to lie to me."

"What am I supposed to–"

"I've killed someone in the Taj Mahal," Natasha interrupted, "I've climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and I've accidentally kidnapped an endangered species."

"True, wrong, and wrong," Tony said. "Well. Almost. You're bending the truth. Nice try."

Steve tore his eyes away from him so he could look at Natasha. "... Well?"

"He's right." Natasha paused. "I was planning on climbing the Eiffel tower. My target got stuck about five feet above the ground."

"What did you do?"

"Got some crepes."

Clint snorted. "Okay. What about the endangered species?"

"It wasn't accidental."

"Alright, do it again." Steve pinned Tony with a solemn look before the spies had the chance to carry the conversation further. "And try to tell me how you're doing it."

Tony met Steve's eyes only reluctantly. He forced himself to pay attention, rather than let his instincts take over like they had with Natasha.

"My parents were Scottish. I joined the army after being rejected twice."

Steve wasn't a good liar. It might have mattered, were lies the only thing Tony was able to pick up on. His chest tingled with emotions that weren't his own, conveying disbelief, doubt and dishonesty, a lie, lie, LIE.

"Wrong," Tony croaked out, shuddering from the sensation of having someone else's feelings running through his chest.

Perhaps it wasn't quite that extreme, but the flashes Tony got were enough.

"Alright." Mercifully, Steve didn't try to press. Something must have shown in Tony's expression. "I believe you."

Tony pushed away his reluctance and allowed the scientist part of his brain to take over. He had a hypothesis. He had evidence. He'd prefer if someone other than him could pose as test subject, but he supposed that would be too much to ask.

"I think it's time we did some tests," he said, forcing his legs to carry him towards the labs. He wished Bruce was there. He could use a fellow scientist in his corner. "Looks like the stone had more side effects than we thought."

Tony swallowed against the nervous flutter at the back of his throat. The mind stone hummed happily in his chest, uncaring of the anxiety it was causing its host.

Tony hoped that Thor decided to pay them a visit soon – even if it meant figuring out the mess they'd helped cause with his brother.

A/N: If you feel like reading a Spider-Man-centric, angsty social media fic, I highly recommend 8 minus 1 from JustAnotherOutcast on ao3. It's incredibly creative, wonderfully angsty and the characters are a delight!

Beta'd by the wonderful To Mockingbird, PyrothTenka and Igornerd!

Please take a moment to let me know what you think!

~Gwen