A Little Unsteady
Chapter 10
**Trigger Warning**: Graphic depictions of injury
It could have been in slow motion.
It could have all been in slow motion.
There was a silence—a true silence—that fell practically all over the city.
No planes. No cars. No communication. No one breathed. No thing existed. Everything just paused. Frozen. Captured in time.
…And then, it was all rushing back.
There was a clamber, a chaos, an intake of breath so fast it whistled. Hearts thundered in their chests as eyes widened in their sockets.
Language didn't quite make sense at first, an incoherency bleeding through, but then it all did again in the blink of an eye.
"Who's got location?" The words were still a bit clunky. Chewed out. Solid, hard to swallow. Mechanical, really, just like his suit of armor. But time was moving again, and time would not be on their side.
The time to act was right now.
"What the hell happened?" Barton chewed out, arrows lowering.
"Whose eyes are on the kid?" Steve questioned with a mild gasp.
"Mine." Thor nearly questioned and the fear and doom that had settled heavy in his chest blew out his insides like broken glass. "What has happened?" Urgency laced through his veins, one arm halting the young boy, Zechariah (he couldn't make the child worry, could he?) as his other arm drew him to a small window in the stairwell. The broken frame creaked as his head filled up the space. He looked around down below but from his vantage point on the stairs, he could see nothing of the commotion occurring. A taste of slick bile lingered on his lips.
"What's going on?" He pled, feeling stuck and trapped in more ways than one. "Where is Loki?"
"Loooooki," Zechariah singsong, looking lost momentarily, then clapping his hands. "Magic! Magic!" The boy's skin rippled once more, emanating a kind of heat.
Thor bit his lips—uncertainty riddling his soul. He wanted nothing more than to leap to his brother's side, shoo away his disgust and be there to understand him but with the foreign child in his company, the only place he could logically go was down.
He couldn't stop himself from glaring at the child then, resenting him for the burdens cascading down upon his lap. Venom dripped from Thor's blue eyes as he fantasized shouting at this being, letting loose his pent-up emotions in a fury, an ever so obvious fear that was capturing him tightly in its grasp.
And just when he opened his moth to spit an angry shut up at the kid—Thor slowed down. He saw in his mind's eye that this would naturally upset the boy and wasn't that what he truly was? A boy? How could Thor dare to think of undoing all of Loki's hard work de-escalating the child, knowing full well if something had happened to his brother—while the child might be to blame—he was still a child and Thor wielded no magic that could soothe him as gracefully. And wouldn't Zechariah only grow large again, breaking the top of the building off and thus endangering more mortals lives down below?
Thor sighed. No, he couldn't do that. Not only would it be questionable in fairer circumstances, it was incredibly unethical and damaging to not only this child but anyone else having to deal with the aftermath thereafter.
He had to be mature. He had to be the adult in the situation because he was one. His time for immaturity and falling over his own knees were over. He had to be responsible.
Because that's what he was, right? Responsible?
And that of Loki? He shuddered, couldn't help it, as though father's words from eons ago had held any semblance of truth. Could Loki be trusted? And more, still, could Thor believe Loki's trust for the mortals meant anything good for his brother? Maybe… maybe he'd been projecting his own insecurities about his feelings on his brother to Tony, and maybe it was all a bit silly now, considering.
But blue eyes diverted as a hand rested on his shoulder and a red-headed friend stared intently back at him—the thoughts faded. Eclipsed. Vanished. Gone.
"It's Loki," she said.
And she didn't have to say anything further. She didn't have to say anything more at all. Thor knew, already, somewhere deep in his chest, and he couldn't help the small gasp that flung free from his lips.
"Where?" Thor managed to utter, voice low and distinctly aware of the child withering in the heaviness of its weight.
"Ground floor. Black Chevy truck. Two hundred yards from the entrance." Natasha's eyes pierced Thor's and the thunder god couldn't decipher the emotion lying behind her mind but the way she bit her lip and frowned, eyes blinking downcast, he didn't have to wait a second to confirm: it's bad.
Thor barely glanced at all the steps below, opting instead to jump from where he was down, all the way down, from the box shaped gap between the railings and he landed so hard, so resolutely, that he didn't mind or really care for the way his knees shook and his joints groaned. It didn't really matter to him then. Not… not at all.
"Where is he?"
Dust plumed out in the city, a distant screeching of a car alarm in protest. Humans were crying, pointing.
...Some, some were laughing.
Thor never felt so much loss and anger ignite for him at the same instance as now, but it happened and it happened fast and he couldn't help the yell that tore through his throat and belched into the dry, pollinated air, "Shut up! Shut up!"
"Thor," someone said, almost pleading but his vision swam and his eyes leaked moisture when the scene before him gradually made sense. When it gradually became clear.
It's just that he didn't want to see it. He didn't wish to believe it.
Everything about the realization made his veins run cold. He shivered, and the light of the sun got blotted out by stormy clouds and he would have fallen to his knees if he'd given himself the chance—but now was not a time to mourn but rather a time to act.
He found himself running. Air in his hair, all other noises drowning out. It was only him and Loki—as it had always been. Just the two of them. The two brothers. Did Loki know? Did Loki know how much Thor loved him?
Did he say it back to him? In jest? In truth? Had he said it recently? Had sentiment slipped past his brother's lips and had he said it to Thor? Would he? Would he ever get the chance to hear those words—words Thor suddenly found himself craving, craving as he needed air, craving as he needed water.
Would Loki say it?
Ever again?
He didn't really try to shake himself out of it. He didn't really try to let the thoughts go or the mourning to truly take place. And maybe it never really left from all those times before. It was just that the moment was so heightened, Thor forgot to move or breathe and his thinking would come later. Thinking would come later.
Right now, he had to be. And do everything in his power to allow Loki to be again, too.
~#~
Either the dust was just beginning to settle, or Tony was seeing things as he flew his way to the truck. He couldn't have been further than Thor (there was a very real possibility Thor would murder him tonight) but he would have done anything to be met with such a fate—just so long as the younger demigod was alive. He would give anything to see his sharp eyes in focus, that trust—god, the trust he put on him—in his gaze again, that newly budding light everything Tony wanted to remember him as.
He frowned at the thought.
This wouldn't be the… last time? Would it?
Tony's breath caught in his throat and tears stung his eyes. He could so clearly see that time Loki had passed out in the workshop so many, many months ago. He wasn't sure why it was that memory that pinpricked in his mind, but it was suddenly so clear: his meek jokes, the way Loki had huffed and interjected with the inventor he'd be too busy being dead to tell him.
A laugh froze in his chest and it felt too real all of a sudden. It felt too all encompassing.
This was happening.
This was really, actually, happening. And it wasn't some plot in a movie or words on a page, this was happening right in front of him and the small handful of people poking their heads around the misshapen walls, and the child, the wild child somewhere in Nat's grip. This was happening. And it felt all the more suffocating.
Loki had been there. Until he wasn't. He'd existed and then he had been snuffed out. His light had potentially faded completely. He was until he wasn't—and didn't that faith, that hope, that beginning of becoming, that nurtured side, that wonder, god, that life—hadn't him finally becoming happy and excited and content—hadn't THAT mattered to the Universe? Hadn't that meant everything? Wasn't it supposed to?
If the world wasn't just, if the world gave out shitty endings to people (or gods) that had shown new promise, had shown new growth, who had decided that this fight of life genuinely was worth it—hadn't that kind of living and wanting to live just been completely extinguished? And, for what purpose? What gain?
Why did the world have to care whether Loki lived or died? And if it didn't, if it never did and never would, then why would it happen at all? Was there being no reason to exist worse than one that made some inkling of sense? Why was Loki the one so cursed?
Did it matter? He thought to himself. Did these semantics even matter?
Because a life not yet lived should matter.
A life not yet lived, of hope returning of a person, it should matter.
Shouldn't it?
It had to.
Otherwise, what would be the point?
So, brown eyes searched the ants below, in haste and in hope that it was not too late. It was not too late to make things right.
Tony could be trusted, right?
He had a good head on his shoulders (most days)?
There was a reason Loki felt seen by him and a reason for him to have earned a spot in Loki's life.
So, Tony couldn't give up. He couldn't let this light go out. He wouldn't let it. And he'd contend with the entire makers of the Universe if it was the last thing he'd do.
Come to think of it, maybe Thor would beat him before that end.
If Loki didn't survive this—Tony would be more than at peace to let the thunder god do his worst.
If it came to that; so be it.
~#~
As it turned out, Clint was the first on scene. He didn't know how or why or for what reason, what purpose, but he was there. First. He could have planted a white surrender flag to show the Universe: don't take this one. To plead. To beg, just so long as the trickster was returned.
But this was no time for flags. No time for games.
He got there first.
He really, really wished he hadn't.
He just barely noticed a cool shudder roll down his back. The Chevy's (what was left of it) roof had completely caved in out of the weight of a demigod falling fifteen stories from the sky above.
Clint gazed up at the height automatically, as though mentally calculating the truth against what was before him. He must have been satisfied, eyeing where he thought Loki had lost his footing (what had happened? One minute he's alive and standing, and the next—?) and pain entered his blue eyes.
He realized, with a sinking feeling, that the demigod's back got the brunt of the impact, even despite his armor. He couldn't help but imagine the redness and bruises one gets when belly flopping into water…. this was worse than that.
He really couldn't stop the spell of nausea rifling through his system as he identified pools of blood sliding off the three feet of condensed car roof.
He realized, again, a little late, that the amount of blood was probably the most obvious of the damage. He gagged as he moved to the back of the car and the way the blood rained off the crunched rear window, dropping and pattering to the pavement, rivers of red soaking the dirt.
It wasn't possible to have that much blood.
He didn't know why he did it, but Clint extended his hand to one of Loki's. Warm skin met cold—colder than normal—and held it gingerly. His hand was so unnaturally limp. So thickened and slick with blood. Clint could have mistaken this as the quantity of water in the Red Sea. Pale flesh had trails of blood running down it. Drip-dropping to the ground.
It could have almost been peaceful.
If, of course, it wasn't a teammate. If it wasn't a loved one. A friend. If it wasn't personal. If it wasn't so wrong. If it wasn't so unfit.
How could this be the way Loki went out?
Clint blinked and felt the thundering amounts of numbness soften and still his face. His vision became unfocused, watching the scene as if he were hundreds of yards away. Maybe he was—he couldn't feel his toes any more than his hands.
His fingers instinctually sought for a beat, but it wasn't one they found.
Dread threatened to outweigh the nausea.
But, but it wasn't that bad, right? It wasn't that bad.
Loki could bounce back. This depth of how much blood was shed, it—it didn't have to mean that if he survived, he may never function properly again. Even if the muscles of his back were pulverized, strewn partially around his armor like limp spaghetti noodles—it didn't have to mean such a dire and vile outcome. Not at all. Loki was strong, hell, he wasn't even human and if this had happened to Thor, the thunder god would still be running half marathons. Loki was resilient. And life was weird, life even with deficits could be managed. And wasn't the existence of life with challenges better than no life at all?
So, with the numbness and the cold and the rain showers, wiping away the scene, cleaning what was lost for what could grow anew, at some point Clint had fallen back on his ass and just watched in shock.
Tony next. Then Thor soon after. And then there was Bruce. And Clint couldn't remember who the fuck Steve was. And Nat said things to him, he thinks, but he couldn't quite access those memories, that skillset.
It came, it came, it came.
And the water washed away the red.
And there were flashes of white and blue.
But before any of that could be processed, before any new stimuli could be encoded, Clint thought maybe a nap would help.
So, he glided to his side, dirt on his face, eyes unseeing. And maybe this new nightmare would fade, like all the rest.
Maybe it was all but a dream.
And there could be peace in that.
There could be peace.
~#~
There was stillness in the air that didn't belong.
Never belonged.
His iron boots landed hard on the ground and while his face plate surveyed the scene automatically—noticing in the emptiness that no one else was there yet—besides, no, wait, a shellshocked Clint—his line of vision existed at a much shorter distance.
"Loki!" He was yelling, but he might as well have been whispering.
The note of his voice, pained and panicked, lay latched upon the air. "Loki?" His teeth bit into his bottom lip and he just noticed his hands were trembling.
Jarvis may have been in his ear, but with a tear sliding down his cheek, he knew he'd never be ready to hear the news his AI wanted to break to him.
He clutched back a sob that threatened to fling loose as the dirt crunched beneath his weight and he felt like he was trapped in forever free falling.
Except the ground never came up to meet him.
It was just a perpetual stillness. Frozenness. No longer being-ness.
A shaky palm entrapped in his suit came to lay over Loki's chest. He wasn't sure why he thought he'd feel a rhythm: a rise, a fall, a beat.
But the sheer collision of feeling nothing drove out any last bit of hope and faith in his world. His vision grew dark, and a shadow fell over his eyes. Not that Loki would be aware, but maybe he'd be disappointed. It was the sudden absurdity of this outlandish notion of what Loki would think or do or react or simply be that made Tony feel so caught between despair and the longing ache of potential acceptance.
But the presence of this small ounce of acceptance immediately floored the inventor with anger and panic.
How could he have done this? Be a part of this? How could he have overridden Thor and then failed himself, the older demigod and Loki so brutally? So unacceptably? So direly? So… fatally?
And what would this mean for the team? For the relationship he'd have or more likely not have with the thunder god from this point onwards? Would they just become strangers to one another? Clipped tones of asking how each other is doing without caring for the true answer? And Fury? What would he have to face there? And with all of Loki's belongings, the things he had touched, the lives he had impacted and grown upon, the life he had made here—would that all simply vanish without his soul to tend to it?
Would the team so resolutely move on from Loki's enhanced active participation—would his absence be noted, or would they go on like the trickster had never existed?
Tony shook his head.
No, Loki had grown on them—all of them. He had made his mark on the team, that was evident, but more than that, he was one of them now. He was a friend. A reformed evildoer, now able to de-escalate better than Steve.
His absence would be felt. Crushingly so.
This could not be the end.
And, yet somehow it seemed like it was.
Reality and the world, hell, the Universe could be so cruel. And what had any of them done to truly deserve that?
A/N: Hello! It's Me. This isn't entirely the A/N I meant to write and I want to first apologize for the fact that this chapter ends so abruptly—I just tested positive for COVID today and am feeeeeeeling it and I would love for there to be more to read in this chapter but I just can't brain today, you know? And I don't imagine my brain power will be any better tomorrow so I'm settling with just uploading this today instead. Bleh. Not the plan I had but alas.
Overall, I am so, so, SO proud of myself for allowing imperfection to win the battle that the war of a 3 year break from writing or updating this story has fought. Firstly, my IMMENSE apologies for such a long, long wait. I honestly didn't touch back on this story for a couple of years after Chp 9 released in Mar. 2020 and so much has changed since then!
For one, an entire pandemic happened. I got COVID myself back in summer 2022 and apparently now at end of 2023, bleh, it's just as terrible as I remembered it being. _
Second, 65% of the reason I didn't update is because of perfectionism and avoidance. To be honest, I haven't even fully reread this story in over a year and this update is coming in hot with only having reread PART of the last chapter—because I swear if I wait any longer for "the perfect time" it will NEVER come. So, imperfectly done is best practice, it seems.
I also changed jobs three times since this was last updated and a lot more of my creative writing these days goes into Youtube videos and descriptions, Reddit, work documentation and groups creations (as well as some other fanfics!) I basically work to prepare for groups, present groups and document groups as my new job (I work at an adult inpatient/psych hospital setting.) And going into 2024 I'll be transitioning to a 40 hour position (which is SO exciting, even if COVID is soiling the plan thus far, grrr). So, overall things have been better and improving, 2023 was a YEAR for sure but…
At the time of updating, I was being visited by many Loki references and quotes in Avengers and I knew in my soul that it was only just to update and cast my gaze back to my number one most popular fic for a long awaited (oh! The cliffhanger I left you all on for 3 years!) update (i.e. this story).
There have been other fics in the Loki universe that I've written or worked on during this story's long break, though I've taken a clear, from what I can remember at the moment, break from Avengers fics (as I'm terribly, terribly behind in all things Marvel the past few years (I haven't watched any of the Loki seasons gwah)) in general and in the last year have been focusing on some House MD related fan fiction creations instead.
One of my greatest new affirmations this year is: "Imperfect and done is better than perfect and unfinished" so in true fashion, here's a chapter that pales in comparison to the length of its previous yet still updates the story no matter how imperfect from that original goal and idea.
I don't have an idea where the story goes from this point on, but it's more refreshing and freeing than how it's been for a long time. As I transition into a 40 hour work week, I'll need somewhat of a grace period for that for a bit as my time management skills are … shoddy at best. With time and learning from my mistakes and reshaping how I operate in the world, I'm sure we'll figure it all out. Overall, there will always be more to say, read and do. Find your purpose! Your calling! And make it worth the wait. Happy new year!
PS From the fraction of the last chapter that I did print and reread, it was SO lovely to feel the feels, the cringe, the love, the eeek! All over again! And the laughs; those were great, too. I am honored and in your debt for all that have read this story and stuck around. Blessings to you! FFN continues to be a dick about views count, but it was so nice to reread some of the reviews there from this story that I am pretty sure I never was alerted about or just entirely forgot existed.
Chapter written: 6.7.2022, 6.8, 6.11, 6.12, 12.7, 12.8, 12.14.2022; 3.28.23, 12.28-12.30.2023
Edited: 6.7, 6.8.2022; 3.28, 12.29-12.30.2023
A/N: 12.29-12.30.2023
Music listened to: Try by Mandy Harvey, There could be a place by Roo Panes, Born Again by Rihanna, RUNNING by NF, Hello by Adele
