Male!Loki x Enhanced!Female!Reader: A Place Like Home [Ch. 11]
Summary: Be careful what you wish you for—the clichés might never stop coming.
Challenge: "160 Collective Drabbles" on Lunaescence Archives
Rating/Tags: T (Reader-Insert; Female Reader-Insert; POV Second Person; Not Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase Two Compliant; Canon Divergence - Post Movie: Avengers (2012); Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence; Alternate Universe; Enhanced!Reader; Redeemed!Loki; Not A Deconstruction; Established Relationship; Panic Attacks; Other Tags Not Added to Avoid Spoilers)
Pairings/Relationships: Loki/Reader; Avengers Team & Reader; Background Canon Relationships
Tag List: @imaginesfire
Master List
Ao3 Version
Chapter 11: Truly a Lovable Creature
None of the occupants of the streams of cars below knew of the danger looming so menacingly near them. At any moment, the massive shape of Sanctuary II could cross over the sun and plunge them all into literal and figurative darkness. For the time being, though, they all had places to be and people to see. The possibility of a second, much worse alien invasion probably hadn't crossed their minds that morning. They all remained equally oblivious of the solitary woman gazing down at them from her precarious position on Avengers Tower's hastily-repaired launchpad.
And you had the power to keep things that way: the people ignorant, the planet relatively safe. You would keep it that way. But curiously, the moment your toes brushed the open air at the end of the walkway, the entire world around you spun. Before you could pitch off the building, you sat down at the very edge of the pad. Sure, you planned to go down eventually, but you preferred to make the choice of when exactly—go out with a bit of dignity, so to speak.
Your shoes dangled off into nothingness as you watched the traffic pass. Falling would be so easy. You were in something of a time crunch. If the team stopped arguing for any amount of time, one of them was likely to notice you'd never returned from your alleged getting of fresh air. They would die for you. You'd realized that during the meeting. Whether they thought you were crazy for thinking you didn't belong here, whether they distrusted you because of your relationship with Loki—they all loved you enough to give their lives to keep you safe.
And since you loved them, too, you couldn't allow them to do it. The fact remained you could be right. You might have caused all this. Real or not, you couldn't sit by and let them get hurt. Yes, you might have read the occasional whump or hurt/comfort fic back in your world, but reading about Natasha being tortured would be very different from seeing it firsthand after she'd spent an evening painting your nails with meticulous care.
That your inhale following your decision came so steadily came as a pleasant surprise. So did how readily you stood again. The street beneath you didn't spin this time. All you needed to do was taken one step forward...
"There is a shortage of perfect faces in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours. Careful!"
So great was your shock at being addressed that you had startled and wobbled dangerously at the edge of the launchpad. Loki—of course no one else would be here to see you in this state but Loki—grimly caught your wrist to tug you to safety. Against your better judgment, you fell against his chest and trembled there. Intention to jump or not, you still didn't want to manage it by accident.
When the fear passed, you pushed away to glare at him. "What are you doing here?"
"Several things," he answered. "First and foremost, I'm ensuring that you don't kill yourself."
"Well, that's too bad, because I don't remember asking for your permission to save the world."
"Won't you at least hear me out? Come. I'd feel much more secure with some distance between you and that drop."
You did not budge. Loki sighed, but it wasn't his usual over-the-top weight-of-the-world-on-his-shoulders kind of sigh. Very deliberately, he loosened his grip on you and dropped your hand. Then he sat down in your previous position with his boots hanging into the void.
"Very well. We'll do things your way. Will you please sit with me for a while?"
Your arms—which you'd wrapped tightly around yourself when freed—relaxed somewhat. But still you made no move to join him.
Now he rolled his eyes. Afterward, he lifted his right hand in the air and kept the left fully visible to you and said solemnly: "I swear by all the gods in Asgard, Jotunheim, and Midgard that I will do nothing to force you to comply with my requests. I only want to speak with you."
Now that your determination had been so rudely interrupted, the whipping wind at this height had you shivering. You took a seat beside him hesitantly all the same. Better that, you figured, than to shake yourself right off the platform.
"I think you said everything you needed to say earlier," you said.
Rather than respond, Loki unclasped his cloak. The warm weight of it settled over your shoulders before he said anything else.
"I'm sorry," he said at last. "I was...No. I am scared of dying."
Your fingers twisted around the edge of the cape to draw it closer around you. Despite the gale and the cold, the herbal scent you'd come to associate with Loki himself remained stuck to the fabric.
Loki's laughed humorlessly into the sky. "Pathetic, isn't it? I would do anything to escape the death that is my birthright. You would offer yourself in exchange for what you believe to be a lie."
"It is a lie," you said.
"But it isn't!" Now he turned to you. "Everything you've experienced here has been real, and everything you remember from before is real, too."
"So why did you try to convince me it wasn't?"
"I thought if we both could believe in the truth of this place, it would—what is the Midgardian saying?—seal the deal. That I could be saved. I see now that I was wrong."
"Too bad it took you so long to realize that," you said. "Maybe if you'd admitted everything months ago, Tony and Bruce would have had time to get the real Cinnabar back, and we wouldn't be in this mess."
"[Name], there is no 'real' Cinnabar. The only Cinnabar there's ever been is you."
"You just told me that all of this," you waved one hand wildly around your head, "is real!"
"It is! A wish become reality is still reality."
You stood with enough force to send Loki's cape billowing off your body. The wind soon whisked it away. "Then all of this is my fault, and I have to make it right."
Loki got to his feet as well. "Your fault? Whatever are you talking about?"
"'A wish become reality is still reality.' My wish became reality! I wished to be less lonely, and I woke up here. If I had never done that, everyone here would be safe. They'd never have known me. Thanos wouldn't have a shortcut to the stones. I—"
He silenced you with a hand softly cupping your face. "I wished to have lived a better life. As I lay dying on the Statesman, while in close proximity to several Infinity Stones, I wished to have done more, been more, loved more. [Name], you were the answer to my wish."
What possible reply could you give to that other than, "What?"
"So I am certain that you can understand," he went on, "that I cannot allow you to make this senseless sacrifice on my behalf. I cannot let you die on the altar of my selfishness."
"I can't stay, Loki. If Thanos gets ahold of me, he'll kill half the universe before you all can do anything to rescue it."
"I know. That is why while you were off having your fruitless work meeting with the rest of the Avengers, I was calling in a few favors to get my hands on this."
He held up the same satchel he'd once carried the photograph of your family in. Carefully, he opened the top of it. A thin current of blood-red liquid surged from the top like a tiny geyser before he sealed it shut once more. You could hardly believe your eyes.
"Is that the Aether?" you asked.
One end of his lips curled at your obvious wonder. "The Tesseract would never have gotten you home. You traveled realities, not distance."
"But it's not in stone form. How are you going to get it to do anything?"
"All I plan to do is undo my wish. I don't see that putting it in a stronger form will make the object more or less likely to bow to my whim, seeing as I never made my wish directly on it to begin with. It's just a sort of focusing instrument with fantastical powers beyond your imagination."
“So because it’s magic, you don’t have to explain it?”
“I’m so glad you understand. We really make an incredible team, you and I. It’s as though our souls were cut from the same cloth.” His winning smile faded slowly away. “I didn’t lie about everything, you know. I really do love you.”
“Because this universe forced you to love me,” you said.
“No. The love came later. Watching you, talking to you, sharing my fears with you, I found myself inexorably drawn to everything about you. You truly are a lovable creature, [F Name] [L Name]."
Could you believe him? You wanted to. Which didn't make a lick of sense, seeing as if you had just had an argument with a normal man back home, you wouldn't be so quick to put your guard down—but here you were, able and ready to do so for a self-professed god of mischief! Before you could give more thought to the question of trust, he added:
"And that is why I have to let you go."
Red liquid gushed now from the top of the satchel in his grasp. It swirled round and round and round your body, dousing the whole scene in a deep, dark scarlet. You could barely see Loki even though he remained mere inches from you.
"Wait! Come with me. You'll be safe there," you said.
"I rather think I've broken your heart enough to make up for multiple worlds by now."
"But just because I'm gone won't mean Thanos isn't going to come!"
"I know. But you'll be safe. And that is something I have come to realize I am willing to die for."
Your field of vision had shrunk to the point that all you could see of Loki were his eyes, two shiny, all-black spheres shining at you through the reddish-dark. The noise of the traffic and the wind had diminished.
"If there is a universe where I exist and you do not, and there is a universe where you exist and I do not," he said, "then surely somewhere there is a universe where we both exist. I will look for you there. I love you, [Name]."
Everything went black. The sound of a rushing river filled your ears. No wind stirred your clothing. It felt as though slick, opaque walls were pressing in on you from every angle. You tried to speak, but your tongue would not move, nor would any other part of your body. Only one thing remained to make clear:
'I love you, too.'
******
The sharp blare of your alarm cut through the thick darkness like a knife. Groaning, you thrust one arm from your warm cocoon of blankets and groped about until you found your cell phone. Only after you'd silenced the din did you sit up enough to expose yourself to the chill of the world beyond your bed.
Half a yawn later, realization struck. Your bed. You turned your head to one side to see the dust-coated blinds. Your room. You pulled the fabric covering your chest out so that you could give it a thorough examination. Your pajamas.
All traces of sleepiness vanished. One small leap had you out of bed with your feet on the floor. You rushed out into the rest of your tiny, one-bedroom apartment. Just outside your bedroom sat your crammed living-slash-dining room. Nearby was the kitchen, filled with feeble pre-work-shift sunlight drifting through the skylight, and—yes!—a pile of dirty plates rising from the sink. A calendar was pinned where you could not miss it; its pages were still open to December of the previous year.
Previous year?!
You clapped a hand over your own mouth to keep the weak laughter from burbling out of your throat and disturbing your neighbors. Just as quickly as you'd been filled with energy, you lost the strength to stand upright. The open bedroom door served to hold you up as you slowly slid to the floor, pulled your legs up to your chest, and buried your face in your knees.
Just a dream. It had only been a vivid, wild, exceptionally lengthy dream—one you could never share with anyone else. Anyone hearing the details of your fantastical Avengers life would surely remind you to stop reading on Ao3 at least an hour before bed. No, you'd just have to keep this secret to the grave.
Curious, you lifted your head and shifted to look at one forearm. You concentrated with all your might on the emotions you'd felt in that dream: anger, fear, anxiety, love, courage. Nothing happened. Even attempting to trigger yourself into a panic attack resulted in no change whatsoever.
Your phone chimed with a reminder that you'd better stop living in dreamland if you wanted to keep your job. Here in the real world, you still had rent to pay, so up you got. You finished your morning routine with picking up a to-go breakfast from the kitchen. Then you grabbed your keys and your purse and made to leave.
You saw it just before you stepped outside: Your corkboard plastered with memories. An enormous grin spread across your face as you locked the door behind you.
In one familiar photograph of your family, someone nearly hidden in the background had the wrong-colored eyes.
THE END
Final Author's Note:
Hey, thanks for joining me for this little surprise adventure. As I said previously, this was originally intended to be a one shot that just had the penultimate scene until I realized it really wouldn't have any emotional payoff unless I built up to it. The pacing is a little wonky, but, hey, I think this is the best paced multi-chapter fic I've written. And it gave me an opportunity to try some things, like writing action scenes (those always ground my progress to a halt) and trying to keep the romance ever-present even when Loki wasn't physically in a scene. I hope that I succeeded to some small degree in my goals. I've been studying plot pacing a lot recently, so I hope my next attempt (which through a poll on Tumblr will be Blossoms in the Snow) will show improvement.
As always, I have to give a huge shout-out to my IRL friend, R. Thank you for always being a text away from answering my bizarre questions such as, "Is it racist to say someone tastes like MSG after they eat Chinese food?" or helping me figure out an appropriate onomatopoeia; for almost always knowing what word I'm looking for when I describe it to you; and for enduring the all-important "bitching step" of my writing process and listening to me moan about how words like "herbaceous" don't mean what I want them to and English is a stupid language. Even after all these years, you complete me. You don't often read my fic, so it's unlikely you'll see this, but if you ever do: I love you, and I think you're pretty swell.
And perhaps most importantly: If you were kind enough to leave me any sort of comment that wasn't trying to scam me, I appreciate you very, very much. (And joke's on you scammers; I don't have Instagram or Snapchat!) This story didn't get a whole lot of traction, so the engagement you gave me truly mattered. Goodbye, and I hope to see you again once I get through my one shot request list!
