Loki Imagines

Proving It (Part Three)

Loki gets lost in his head for a little while after that. It ends up taking more than a few days and nights alone in his room, talking to no one and staring at nothing, for him to pull himself together. It's not every day that a god comes to terms with their death, especially when Y/N's twin made it sound rather imminent. Allfather knows her brother was hoping for it, anyway. Like he said before, Loki dying means Y/N heads back to the Underworld, and all the pieces are back into play. It's supposed to be the perfect ending, and it is unless you're the one who's dying in the first place.

That being said, it's not like Loki can really do anything about it. And, when a week has come and gone and Loki feels no closer to dying than he had before, he gives up worrying on the matter entirely. He's risked his life so many times that breathing his last feels the same as filling his lungs again anyway. When he looks at Y/N, he doesn't see a reaper, just someone he loves. That, he thinks, will never change.

Loki has kept that conversation to himself, however. He has a feeling that Y/N would be irritated with her brother for bringing it up, just as Loki would if Thor tried anything. It's not like he's lying to her, just withholding certain details about the fact that half her family seems to think that him dying will solve all their problems. What's not to love about that?

At the end of the day, though, Loki is a god, and that means he's used to deliberating about his immortality. Odin was a warrior's god, and that meant countless wars and conquests. The gods seem to only get younger, not older, and everyone reaches that point when they ask why their fathers seem to be the oldest people around. People die, gods die. Time erases it all anyway.

The next time Loki smiles, it's not forced at all but real. Who knows when he'll die- maybe in a decade, maybe tomorrow. He might as well get some use out of these next string of hours, right? So, he forces himself to go back on missions, trains with his brother, travels with Y/N all around the world just to compare it to the ones they know. She says Ancient Greece seems to sing of her father's domain, from every coast and rocky cliff. Loki promises that the cold miles of the north speak to him of his father's home, both Laufey and Odin's land. In the end, it is perfect.

Most of their time, however, is spent back at the Avengers complex. The other members of the world's supposedly greatest heroes have long since accepted Y/N amongst their ranks- the fact that she's proven herself as the goddess of bloodlust and also treated the Underworld as a summer home speaks to her character, that's for certain. Tony and Natasha haven't fully recovered from what they saw in the land of the dead. It hangs around them still, darkening their eyes and weakening their will. Maybe Loki isn't the only one with a sign that he's damned.

They don't let that trouble them for long, though. On nights like this, the various members of the Avengers, or at least those that aren't scattered across the seas on official missions, are sprawled across couches and chairs, leaning up against the walls and hanging off of each other. It's a mess of a group, but Loki is finally seeing how they all seem to think of it as a family. Hell, someday it might even be his, if he'd let himself give in to it all.

They've been swapping stories for a while now, the favored pastime of heroes with too much time to kill and too many nightmares to let them rest. Natasha just finished talking about her latest trip to Russia, trying to find evidence of her true past. She has a family, a sister and a mother and father, but they were just agents. Loki has heard her mention that she's been trying to track down her actual blood relatives, although she's not having much success.

Right now, though, the Black Widow is happy, letting the sound of her friends' laughter tint her memories golden instead of reminding her of the harder times. Thor joins in, talking about fighting with his favored soldiers back in Odin's court. Y/N, sitting on Loki's right with her legs in his lap, leans forward whenever she hears his name.