Spooky Action at a Distance | Frostiron

Turn Your Guns to a Fist

Work. It wasn't the same, but it was something to do. Something to remind him of Tony. Of the days they spent in the lab, Loki would annoy Stephen and vice versa, Bruce would be on the verge of killing someone, and Tony would watch in amusement. Nothing much had changed, but En was there. Not Tony.

Loki hadn't been alone in a while. Not since the funeral. Not in a month. It had been hell. He just wanted to be able to make a cup of tea without being stared at. He knew that En cared. That all of them did it because they didn't want him getting high, but he didn't need it. He could control himself.

Well, he couldn't, but that wasn't the point.

Every single time he thought about it, En would glare and Thor would remind him of what he promised Tony. It was awful. He hated it. But he had to get used to it, somehow.

Work was somewhat fine. It was working to a certain extent. It gave him a distraction. It gave him something to do. It gave him something to do for Tony.

Finish the reactor so he could finish the one thing Tony wanted to finish.

They could finish it.

Despite still being sober, the pain got worse. Grief, they all assumed. The vomiting, the cramps, it always got worse. It would never stop. Grief. At least it wasn't too bad.

The world didn't hate him, luckily. The statement was released. Loki had no say in it. Along with the public terms of Tony's will, the 'adults', as En called them, decided to release the statement too. All merged into one video.

'As of September twenty-twenty-two, we learnt some information regarding the attack of twenty-twelve and the future of this planet.
After discussions with Loki, we have come to learn of the existence of a group who mean to kill half of the universe. The battle was planned and orchestrated by them. Loki was under the same influence as Hawkeye, and is therefore excused of his crimes.
Since then, we've been working closely with Loki to create a defence system that will make the world safer, especially from these people. He's been working with us every step of the way and we owe him a lot.
We know that there'll be a lot of doubts. We had some in the beginning, but Tony convinced us to give him a chance, and we're lucky he did.
On January sixteenth, twenty-twenty-five, Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton died while fighting Thanos. They gave their lives for us to live safely, and we can't ever let them down.
We owe them so much, more than we can ever give, and hopefully we can make them proud.'

Loki stopped listening after that. He'd met Fury. Fury wasn't happy. He didn't want Loki there, but Tony's statement mixed with everyone standing up for him, Fury begrudgingly left.

The world reacted fine, as far as he saw. Steve relaying the statement definitely helped. Everyone loved Steve.

Everyone went back to normal. They carried on. As if nothing ever happened. Steve was working on creating a new Avengers lineup, whereas Bruce carried on working on the reactor. As if nothing ever happened.

Loki wanted out. He was doing fine. He was sober. He was alive. He was in one piece. He had people. He was miserable. He was hopeless. Nothing was okay. Nothing was fine. Nothing was normal, like they all wanted it to be.

Nothing would ever be okay again.

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He was alone. Finally.

They finally trusted him enough to be alone. He wasn't a threat to himself anymore, apparently. When wasn't he a threat to himself?

Loki sighed and sat down, the wall providing enough support for him to stay up. The vomiting only got worse. It hurt. It got to the point where the vomiting was worse than the pain. Bruce said it was grief. Apparently it was a normal reaction to when a soulmate died. Loki didn't know. He wished he didn't have to.