There was a poem that Tony studied in school once, in English class, when he was twelve years old: The Story of Isaac, by Leonard Cohen. He forgot most of it immediately, like he did with everything else that class ever threw his way; to his numerical, carefully calibrated, scientific brain, words never incited passion. He struggled with poetry. (How can a person look at lines of text on a page, the story of a boy and his father, and know how to read beyond the literal surface into deeper secrets railing against the Vietnam War and condemning the exploitation of youth under the false guise of righteousness?) But there were lines that stayed with him. Three lines, towards the end, that struck their way past his mental barriers of indifference and lodged themselves within his memory so that years later, he found himself writing them out in blocky script on the inside cover of a chemistry textbook:

When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must
I will help you if I can

In this moment, with Natasha's gun buzzing heavily in his pocket, his mind is full of those words.

"Okay," he says, holding up his one free hand in a gesture of supplication. "Okay, I get it, you want to go ahead with this. Or you think you want to. But can we just pause for a sec and talk about what you're trying to do? If you open that portal..."

"If I open the portal," Loki calmly replies, "the tens of thousands of Chitauri soldiers waiting on the other side will pour through. They will envelop this city like a swarm of flies, and once they have crushed all who oppose me, they will move on. And on. Until the world falls beneath my power."

"And you think that'll work out for you? Loki, I don't think you understand what you're about to get into! I don't know what the population of Asgard is that it can effectively be ruled by a single man, but Earth is a planet of seven billion argumentative, self-centered assholes. I'd be amazed if you could successfully unite us all under one cell phone provider, let alone one king!"

Loki sneers. "You doubt my ability to rule?"

"No, but I do doubt your math skills," answers Tony. "This place is too big and everybody hates each other too much. Tens of thousands of Chitauri might be able to get you New York City if they're well trained and heavily armed, but they won't be able to hold onto much else. You're outnumbered. You can kill a lot of people and cause a lot of damage, but then what? Ground control to Major Tom: unless you have another billion or so expendable aliens hidden up your space hole, you will never control Earth."

It's a hopeless conversation. Tony knows that. He can see it in the way Loki stands there smirking at him, as if the God of Assholes knows so much better than some puny human. (Tony only lives on this planet, after all; what would he know about its nature?) Loki doesn't care about statistics. He doesn't care about probability. He doesn't care about the trivial, detailed logistics of what enslaving an entire world would really mean. He's too caught up in the dream, forsaking reason for the elusive promise of power or glory or... what is he even after? Revenge? Self worth?

"Fine," Tony says, changing tactics when Loki remains silent. Maybe he can't talk Loki out of this, not yet, but he can look around and scramble together all the other advantages he might have right now. And granted, all those advantages add up to a grand total of one, but one will be enough. Loki's paying attention to him. Instead of starting up the machine, Loki's waiting there, patiently bemused, and humoring this weakling attempt at a convincing argument.

Tony can stall him. Until Barton arrives with that jet, or until Thor snaps out of the enchanted coma. Or until somebody thinks up some way out of this. Anything to keep Loki from opening the portal.

"I guess it's time for you to give me your big speech, then."

"What speech?" Loki asks. He takes a step toward Tony, and another, then sideways around the fallen body of a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. A casual little stroll away from the device. (Good. Good. Keep going.)

"You know. The big, climactic, bad guy speech. At the end of the movie, the villain has the hero in his fortress of death and launches into the whole 'as you know, Mr. Bond, my plot to rule the world is nearly complete' spiel. It's where you tell me what you're doing and why, revealing the masterful complexity of your evil genius."

"And why would I do that, exactly?"

Tony shrugs. (Stall, stall, stall, keep him walking...) "Why not? Don't you like to show off? Or don't you have some burning desire to tell me why the fuck you're still doing this when I'm standing here giving you every good reason not to? And I don't mean just the 'it'll never work' logical reasons. I want to know why you're so set on destroying this planet when I think it's the one place you could actually be happy. You hate Asgard and don't want to go back – I get that – but you can always stay here. With me. We can go back to California, just like I said this morning. Maybe you can start a cult on the internet or something. Do you want to start a cult? I'd be okay helping with that. We can build a website, make it seem exclusive by setting up some arbitrary qualifications for membership, I know a lot of really gullible celebrities... Internet cult messiah with a legion of obedient and reverential followers is a way more attainable goal than emperor of the world. Live out the American Dream. There's nothing stopping you from being happy here."

If that had any impact at all, Loki gives no indication. He's stopped where he stands, five feet away, and it's the blank look again. Always the blank look, with his marble statue face and eyes that seem to look through Tony's insubstantial, mortal form. "No," he murmurs. "I lost any chance at true happiness a long time ago. I could find contentment, perhaps, but..."

He doesn't finish the sentence.

"Why?" Tony asks. "Why just contentment? What's so terrible that it prevents you from ever being happy and pushes you into all this? I think there has to be some tale of woe in here somewhere. Let's have it. Come on. Give me the epic speech."

For a moment, Tony's convinced Loki won't reply. Loki's too quiet and too careful, neatly smoothing down his coat and folding his hands together in that way people do when they're trying to fill a gap of silence with distracting little actions. And avoid an ugly question, or its ugly answer. But then he raises his eyebrows in thought, paces a few steps to the right, and opens his mouth.

"Power," he finally says. He speaks the word elegantly, like a silver-screen starlet exhaling a ribbon of cigarette smoke. "It always has a cost. Happiness is first to go, Tony Stark. One can never have true power and be truly happy. The two repel like oil and water. Nor can one keep a sense of self. Identity fails in the absence of happiness, followed closely by self-respect, as you find yourself eagerly acting in ways that would have once made your stomach turn, all to push yourself an inch further and gain just a little more. Soon this behavior destroys friendships. Then family. Power is greedy, and consumes all. It will corrupt conscience, destroying the ability to distinguish between what you once considered right and wrong, and it will take away any shred of empathy or honor you may still hold. Clinging to tattered remnants is difficult when your hands are so full of things much larger and greater than mere emotion. Those slip away. Unnoticed. Ash on the wind. And ultimately? Power will take your sanity. Because once you have lost everything else... what have you left? A few shadows of memory? A nagging doubt that, perhaps, at one time, you were not this grandiose, overinflated mockery of your former self, magnified beyond all reasonable scope? That perhaps once you were small and plain and normal and... happy? Is it even possible to recall such banal times when now the world spins on your fingertips?"

He pauses to stare hard at Tony with his eyes of frigid glass, maybe looking for an answer, maybe looking for an expression of shock to justify his horror story, or maybe just to let himself bask in self-indulgent conceit. "Eventually there is a moment of clarity," he says, softer now. "One ray of light pierces the fog and you can see all the past and future around you in one vast tableau. All you have lost, all you have gained, all you will one day have, and all you can now never possess. At that point you ask yourself: was it worth it? And I think you know now, Tony Stark, that the answer is always 'yes'. The power is always worth the price."

The trouble is, he's looking back over his shoulder at the Tesseract when he says the last part, and several long seconds heavy with tension drag out before he turns back to Tony.

"Who told you that?" Tony quietly asks.

"What do you mean?"

"Everything you just said. It's a good epic speech, but too prepared. That's not the kind of thing people just say. Nobody talks or thinks like that in real life. Not even Ye Olde Asgardians. So who's your screenwriter?"

"You refuse to accept that I might adhere to such bleak sentiments?" He smiles when he says that, cracking his blank plaster mask. Not a kind smile. Sharp. Cruel.

"It's not refusal to accept anything," says Tony. "I know that's not you talking. You don't really believe that shit. Maybe you want to, or you want to convince yourself that you do, but deep down? No. You're just reciting back some other asshole's opinion by rote like a mindless yes-man. And that's not you. Since when does Loki the Snake betray himself in favor of being someone else's slave? Since when does Loki the Snake give a fuck about power?"

The hard smile stays frozen in place. "Everyone desires power, Tony Stark."

Tony shakes his head. "No. Not you. Remember all those stories you told me? All those relevant things you said? Not a single one ever pointed to you wanting anything more than exactly what everybody else had. Acceptance. Respect. A place in the world. You're not the iron-fist dictator type. You set up a good show of pretending you are, but you're not that kind of guy, Loki. I know you. Somebody else put you up to this, and I bet I'd win the big prize if I guessed it was Thanos. Right?"

Oh, he's right. The slight but sudden stiffness in Loki's stance says so beyond a doubt, even if Loki himself stays dangerously silent.

"So why?" Tony asks. "Why are you risking your life, and the lives of who knows how many thousands or millions of other people, chasing after an insane dream you don't even want? For some motherfucker who's obviously just using you?!"

"You don't know the first thing about this!" Loki snarls.

"Maybe not, but I can guess, and I think my guesses are right on target. The point is, you don't have to do this! Thanos is light years away with no means of reaching you, so why are you still following his orders? Just forget about him!"

"It's not that easy!"

"Loki, what could be easier than not trying to enslave the world?! It's the easiest think you could do! You literally just have to walk away from this! Just walk away! Come downstairs with me! Right now! Walk away and-"

"I can't!" Loki shouts. And the cracked blank mask crumbles entirely away, leaving panic and terror behind. "You think you have the answer, but it is not so simple! I can't walk away! Not from him! Midgard has two fates, and these are your choices! Either Thanos comes to take the Tesseract himself and destroys you all, or I capture it for him and remain behind as your realm's keeper! Those are the only two outcomes! And that was my bargain with him! I find the Tesseract and take ownership of Midgard in exchange for my freedom! If I stay here as his hand to rule over you, I will be unable to return to him, and I cannot return to him! I won't go back! Not there! Not to them! Even if I must destroy a thousand worlds, I will never go back! If you knew what they did, Tony Stark... If you knew..." Within the framing lines of his helmet, his face has turned sickly pale, and his eyes shine too bright with fire and salt. His hands shake as he lifts them to touch his neck and push away some old phantom injury. "You would not condemn me if you knew."

I don't condemn you now, Tony tries to say, but somehow he can't. The scepter is too heavy in his hand, drawing in Loki's frantic energy, and it's so hard to make so much as a sound through the bitter lump rising in his throat.

He knows what Loki's going to say. (Knows.)

And Loki does. "They are hands-on monsters. The Chitauri. And curious. They like touching and testing and pushing limits. How long can a person live without food before he is too weak to fight back? How much blood do the veins hold? How many teeth are there? What hides behind the eyes, or inside the ears, or under muscles? They want to see what happens when they peel your skin back, or melt it away. How easily does flesh shred into a mess of gore if they hold your hands and feet to a serrated wheel? How long can a body be frozen or burned until bones shatter and char? They want to know how many hours or days or... or weeks you can live through the pain, crippled and blind and begging for death in a solitary pit where nobody can hear your pathetic screams... And then? After that? When you are less than a broken ruin, welcoming the end, certain you are about to draw your last breath? Then you wake up from their hallucinatory false reality, and realize that in truth only minutes have passed! And it was all in your mind! AND THEN THEY START AGAIN!"

He screams those words, ragged and shrill, clasping his hands over his neck as his body instinctively shrinks in on itself. Like the memory causes him pain, if the pain was all in his mind, and his mind still remembers...

Sick. Tony feels sick. Loki's story churns in his stomach, and prickles nauseating heat down his spine. And Loki's not anywhere near done.

"I was with them for days and it felt like years! Three days, and it would take me hours to list out even half of what they did to me! Only three days, and I came so close to death that my magic left me, and it was only by the grace of fate that my Jotun form lay dormant beneath. The ice in my skin made their shackles too brittle to hold me. I think they were sorry, then, that they did not kill me sooner. Because I certainly did not bother to play with them before ending their wretched lives. And I should have killed them all! All of them! Every last one – the soldiers, the leaders, the brainless drones – I should have killed them like the insects they are! I wish I had. Torn their heads from their bodies and ripped their throats with my teeth. I wish... But I told you Jotnar are stupid. Easily lured in with promises of power and revenge. So you see?" His voice, cracked with rough edges, falls quiet. "Here I am. I made a bargain. And swore an oath. My freedom in exchange for the Tesseract and your world made docile."

"Loki..."

But what do you say to that? 'I'm sorry'? So incredibly, indescribably, pitifully sorry? For what was done in the past and can't be changed? For what Tony never knew had happened, and might never have known? What can a person possibly say? "I..."

Nothing. You say nothing. You just hold onto that solid weight of sickness inside, and wish you could step forward and offer a comforting touch. But Loki's so far away, hidden in an armored exoskeleton. Unreachable.

Loki glances down at his hands. Flexes his fingers. Tightens his jaw. When he looks back up, he seems to have found his composure again, and the blank mask has been mended. "You were my ray of light, Tony Stark," he says. If there's any emotion in his voice at all, it's nothing more than a sliver of regret. "You shone through all the confusion to show me the truth: that happiness is real, and it is within reach, but it is fleeting and mortal and will never last beyond its own finite limits. Only power can be eternal."

It takes a moment for Tony to notice exactly what he's doing when he turns his back and closes the distance between himself and Selvig's device. It's a disbelieving moment when Tony can only think, What now? as Loki's hands reach down to the number pad and lights begin to glow.

Then realization comes slamming into the front of his mind, along with that specific set of actions the hero's supposed to do in a situation like this. Scream out, "No!" Take a step forward. Stumble, almost fall, take another step, arm outstretched. As if the terrible thing that just happened can be caught in the palm of a hand, and the world set right again so easily.

"Loki, no! You don't want to do this!"

"Yes, I do," Loki answers, the gloss of calm back in place to enfold him completely once more. "I told you. I have no choice. Neither do you. It is either this or the destruction of your world."

He punches in the first code, which Bruce was so sure would remain securely hidden on an electronic key fob.

"Loki... Loki, please..."

And then the second. No need to wait for any arbitrary timeframe to elapse.

"Don't make me..."

The gun might as well be a lead weight in his pocket and around his wrist, drawing his hand down.

Third code. The portal device hums to full power, and the Tesseract brightens with promise.

"Are you going to shoot me, Tony Stark?"

Tony's grip freezes on the handle of the gun.

"I know what you have. I can feel its energy. Your hand is on it right now. Are you going to shoot me?"

"I don't want to," Tony whispers, and his voice might be lost on the wind, but he knows Loki can still hear.

Turning, Loki reaches out with an empty and waiting hand. "Then come with me," he says. His fingers curl inward just a fraction of an inch as an invitation. "As I am Thanos' lieutenant, you will be mine. Stand beside me that I might be a merciful king to your people. Tell me how best to rule and I will heed your advice. Together we could make Midgard great! A mighty power to challenge even Odin Allfather! Your right hand may have found a gun, Tony Stark, but your left still holds the scepter. My scepter. My gift to you, if you join me. It will be yours."

The scepter. He looks down at the jewel in its knife-like claws, and feels, for a moment, that it might be looking back at him. Questioning his worth. Asking him: What do you want?

You could do it, the jewel says. Take your place under the crown of the world. Who better, Tony Stark, than the man who so arrogantly claimed to have privatized peace?

Or, it offers, you could end this all now with the gun in your pocket...

But it also says that Natasha is coming. Its power limns her energy against the inanimate darkness of the stairwell. Behind her, Thor. Running. They crash through the door and onto the rooftop just in time for Thor to let out a shout of horror as the Tesseract explodes with life and a beam of pure energy slices the air.

It hits the clouds with an electric whine and a crack like thunder. Only this time the other side isn't a golden city, but the cold and black depths of space lit only by pinprick stars. Something shadowy swarms just within the mouth of the portal. A writhing cluster of dull blue lights. Hundreds of glowing insect eyes.

And then the first one comes through. And the second. And ten more...

Thor moves first. He jumps into action without waiting for an order, flying up into the sky with his hammer swinging. The first blow he lands on one of those things – those Chitauri – knocks Tony back to reality. The portal is open. The portal is open, to another world, the far end of space, and the invaders are on their way. It's not just a threat any more. Not just an abstract fear. They're here and they're real and they're...

He spins around to face Natasha, who holds her gun with both hands to steady her aim. "Loki!" she shouts. "Shut the portal down!"

"Or what?" he sneers. "You'll shoot?"

"You have three seconds to shut it down before I pull the trigger!"

Spreading his arms wide, presenting a target, he just laughs in her face.

One second ticks by. She shoots on two.

The blast of energy erupts from the muzzle of her gun, and deflects harmlessly off the barrier of magic Loki throws out to protect himself. "You'll need to do much better than that, Agent Romanoff! Have you no better tricks up your sleeve?"

She shoots again, and Loki blocks, this time sending back an attack of his own. The little silver dagger sinks into Natasha's hand. With a gasp and a bitten-back grunt of pain, she falls to one knee and the gun tumbles out of her broken grip.

"Were you not listening?" Loki laughs. "You'll need to do much better! Much, much better..." He calls up a second dagger as the first fades into blackened flakes, flicking it into the air and catching the blade between his fingertips.

Natasha's uninjured hand flies out to her fallen gun, but Loki's new dagger strikes her in the arm.

"Shall I show you?" asks Loki. "Give you an example of how one might kill an adversary?"

When it all comes down to dust, the poem goes, I will kill you if I must...

The gun in Tony's pocket wants to be in his hand. He knows. The scepter tells him.

I will help you if I can.

That shot, the third shot, hits Loki. Upper chest. Right side. He doesn't see that one coming, and has no time to make himself a shield. It hits, and the look on his face switches over in an instant from hateful malice to sudden shock.

Everything that comes next happens in flashes. In slow motion. In fast motion. In strobe-light bursts. In complete silence. To a soundtrack of roaring, deafening chaos.

Loki falls to his knees.

There's no blood at first. It's not like a bullet that sprays a celebratory crimson fountain as it hits its target. The blast of blue energy collides with Loki and sinks in like a ghost, disappearing into his body. Absorbed. It leaves behind a little cloudburst, and...

His armor is gone, where he was hit.

He's scrambling at air and reaching up to Selvig's machine with his left arm, trying to pull himself up. His right arm hangs limply down, barely able to move. His hand finds a solid edge, but he can't hold it. No strength. No balance. He's on his back in the gravel, gasping to draw breath.

His clothing, under the missing armor, is gone.

His skin, under the missing clothing, is a twisted relief of ridges and divots, white and pink and scorched with blue.

"Stark!"

That's Natasha shouting. She might have been shouting before, but Tony didn't notice, just like he didn't notice how he got to Loki's side, or how his shirt came off, or when he pressed the wadded-up fabric down over Loki's disintegrated skin, or when the blood started to flow so fast and warm and thick it's already covering his hands. He dropped his gun somewhere. And the scepter.

"Stark, move! I have to blast the machine! It's the only way to stop the portal!"

There's too much blood, and Loki chokes on it when he tries to speak, spattering his liquid phrase across Tony's chest.

"Stark! Move!"

"No!" And that's him shouting back, though where the words are coming from, he doesn't know. "Don't shoot! If you damage the focus, all that energy will be released without any control! It'll kill us all and take part of the city!"

"Then what do we do?!"

"I didn't mean ..." Tony whispers to Loki, if Loki can even hear, as he tries to reach one hand around the back of Loki's neck. Lift his head. Drain the blood from his throat and help him breathe. "I didn't want..."

"We have to close the portal!"

Loki doesn't try to speak. He draws one labored breath through the blood in his mouth. And spits it back out in Tony's face.

Overhead, the sky fills with blasting guns and the flash of lightning as the portal swirls wider.

And Loki, his Loki, who kissed him that morning and lay bare and vulnerable in his arms, whose skin reflected the silver light of the arc reactor to cast gentle shadows across their bodies, who closed his eyes when Tony's mouth traced the line of his cheekbone, exhaling a small and shuddering breath...

Natasha's red hand is on his shoulder. "Tony... We need to stop this. The portal. If you know anything..."

It's all come down to dust. "The scepter," he mumbles, pushing speech past the clenched wire in his jaw. "It'll tell you..."

Loki laughs without sound, blood streaming in place of a voice.

But it's still his Loki.

I will help you if I can...

ooo

At one time, Tony had his arms wrapped around Loki's body. He felt the thick warmth of blood on his skin, on his hands, on his fingers, on his wrists, seeping through his clothes. He had looked into Loki's eyes... That's his last memory. That's what'll be burned into his conscious mind for who knows how many years to come.

In the next second, Loki was gone. Because Tony didn't have the strength to hold on to him. Not against Thor. Thor took hold of Loki under the arms and lifted him up as if he weighed nothing, pulled him away, out of Tony's reach, and then they both were gone. Just like that. A sudden end.

S.H.I.E.L.D. came up to the roof. Shouting. Chaos. Coulson asked him something. He answered something. That part, he can't clearly remember. Then Tony went downstairs, sat in a chair facing the windows overlooking the New York City skyline, and stayed there without moving as the sun set and the night came in.

ooo

Pepper comes back around midnight. Tony won't say she comes 'home', because it's not really home any more. Not after everything that's happened. Now it's just 'back'.

"Tony?"

He doesn't answer, but she finds him anyway, sitting there in the dark.

"Oh my God, Tony, are you okay?!"

And that's all he really hears. She says other things too, about news reports of an explosion on the roof of Stark Tower, and street rumors of an alien invasion. About a police roadblock that kept her away all evening until Coulson saw her arguing with two cops and told her... He's not listening carefully enough to know exactly what she says, or what Coulson said.

The train of half-panicked speech stops when she switches on a lamp. Then it's a shocked beat of silence before a whispered, "What happened to you?"

Tony looks down at himself. At the stains of blood that saturate his jeans from waist down to shins. At more dried blood flaking on his bare chest and arms. At the sticky, crumpled, shirt he still has squeezed in his hands.

That's a good question. What happened to him? "I..." he starts, but Pepper's anxious statement cuts him off before that one word has a chance to grow into even half an excuse.

"You're covered in blood!"

"It's not mine," he says, because that's what you say. Though, when you think about it, how is being covered in somebody else's blood any better than being covered in your own? In fact, wouldn't that be worse? Your own blood makes you a victim. Somebody else's makes you the villain.

"Where's Loki?"

Another good question, and part of the answer is splashed across Tony's body. "I shot him." A harsh, blunt explanation for a harsh, blunt action. Why bother trying to soften it? Is that possible?

Uncertain, Pepper stares down at him in silence.

"He held out his hand to me, asked me to go with him, and I shot him. With one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s guns. Right in the..." He can't say it out loud, so he mimes it instead, poking himself in the chest with a gun-shaped hand. "I think I was the only person in the world who could've talked him out of it, but I panicked and..."

"Jesus," Pepper whispers, her voice barely audible as it slips through the fingers she's raised to cover her mouth. "Is..."

"He's alive. He's... Thor took him to..." Somewhere. "I don't know where Thor took him." Didn't have time to ask. Away Loki went, just like that. Spirited off into the air. "They'll go back to Asgard." S.H.I.E.L.D. took the space portal device, and somebody might have dropped in couple hours ago to tell him they called Dr. Selvig back to finish the redesign. Or maybe he imagined that. Everything that's happened since he came down from the roof isn't like linear time any more. It's fragmented and intermingled with scenes of ghosts that maybe only exist in his head, and all the broken pieces are too blurry to sort out and put back together in the right order.

"Do you... want to talk about..."

No. Tony shakes his head. He hates talking about these things. Some people want to. He knows that. Some people need to relive their worst moments, over and over, blaming themselves and obsessing their way through the details of what went wrong and how it could have been changed. (If only.) Eventually they talk their way into acceptance. Pepper's one of those people. She talks things through. But Tony's not. In this moment, there's nothing less appealing to him than having to think about what happened and describe what he did. If he never has to think about it again, that'll suit him just fine.

"Do you need anything?" She's so eager to help, leaning forward and nodding with those wide, concerned eyes

Nothing that she can get. "No."

"You sure you don't want a glass of water, or...?" Always so eager to help.

"I don't know," he says. "Pepper, I... I can't even think right now. I just..."

I almost killed the person I was trying to save, and now he's gone.

"Do you want me to tell you what you need?"

Maybe. Maybe that is what he needs: Pepper to tell him what to do. He won't have to think about anything, not even whether or not he should get out of this chair, if he has Pepper to do that for him. Slowly, he nods.

She nods in return, the confident gesture of a person accustomed to taking charge. "Then stand up. You're going to have a shower, because Tony, you can't sit there with all that..." (For a small mercy, she doesn't say the word.) "...on you. While you're in the shower I'm going to make some tea. You're going to have a cup of tea, then go to bed, and maybe tomorrow we can talk. Okay? We can get through this."

Yeah. Again, he nods. They can get through it. People get through things all the time. Worse things. Don't they? People get over trauma and loss. He got over his parents' deaths. He got over Obadiah Stane's betrayal. He got over three months as a prisoner in Afghanistan, and he got over almost dying of palladium poisoning. He got over Pepper (mostly). He'll get over Loki. (Though that name squeezes his chest with a cold, Jotun grip.) He'll get over everything they did and everything they shared and everything he thought he felt. (Because he shouldn't feel those things now.) And everything he maybe, even at the very end, thought Loki might have felt, too. (Because that doesn't matter any more.)

People get over things. They get over things like this all the time.

They put bloody shirts carefully into bags and roll them up and hide them in drawers, and then they shower, and then they sit in bed and drink tea to prove to the world that everything's going to be okay. That's what they do.

And when they wake up the next morning they keep going on with their lives.

Even though he wants Loki. All he wants is Loki. All there will ever be for him is Loki. And Loki is gone.