Work Text:
Loki had to keep himself from jerking when he found the curse nestled under Steve’s sternum, sitting quietly, latched into his heart and lungs, breathing with him and growing. He did not manage to keep his breath from catching.
“What?” Steve asked, pushing himself up to his elbows. “What is it?”
Loki gave him a push back down. “How do you feel?”
“Fine,” Steve said staunchly, though he still looked pale. “I feel fine.” He paused. “Am I?”
Loki hesitated. But only for a moment. “Yes,” he lied. “Perfectly fine. Whatever it was this Mordo was attempting to do, it seems to have failed.”
“So I don’t have to stay here,” Steve said, a little stubbornness sliding into his eyes. “I can go out and help with the mopping up.”
“No,” Loki said, and perhaps it came out too sharp, because Steve gave him a startled look. “No,” he repeated, more mildly. “I am not about to get in trouble with your motley band because I failed to keep you grounded. You can rest. I’m sure they’re nearly done anyway.”
Steve sighed, but he let his head fall back. “I feel fine,” he repeated, insistently.
“Then there’s no reason you can’t take a rest, is there?” Loki said, summoning a smile, though he could feel his heart sinking in his chest.
“Well?” It was Stark who demanded, when Loki returned to the room where they had been waiting. “What’s going on?”
Loki sank into a chair, trying to work out how to say this. Knowing he didn’t want to. He saw Thor tense out of the corner of his eye, Barton watching him narrowly.
“It’s bad, then,” Romanov said, eventually. Loki inclined his head, a fraction.
“Very,” he said, finally. “The working has – it’s feeding on him. Growing in him. When it matures, it will consume him and in so doing, give birth to Limbo-spawn. Perhaps more than one.” The words fell heavily. “I don’t know.”
“So it’s killing him,” Barton said, his voice flat. “Fix it. That’s what your magic powers are supposed to be good for, isn’t it?”
Loki felt his teeth click together. “I cannot.”
“Can’t, or w-”
“Cannot!” Loki’s voice rose sharply and his hands flashed forward to grip the table so hard the wood creaked, threatening to warp. “If I could, do you not think – but the way it has grown, if I try to pull it out it will kill him. If I try to burn it out it will only hasten its growth. It feeds on power, energy. Touching it with any magic will only make the end more swift.” He felt sick, muddled. He kept thinking of Asgard’s library, of other more esoteric texts, but he knew what he would find in them.
“There must be some way,” Thor said, shaking his head. Loki’s hands tightened another fraction.
“I will look,” he said, trying to keep his voice low, to mask the way it shook. “But I do not – I do not expect to find one.”
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” Barton snapped, his voice rising. “Find ways out of impossible situations, that’s what you’re supposed to be good at. So save him, if you’re supposed to care so much-”
The wood cracked. The split ran a good foot into the table, yawning like the crevasses in his heart. “I wish,” Loki said flatly, “that I did not.”
He forced his hands to release. Stood. Walked away.
He sent Thor to Asgard. He went to Vanaheim himself, dug out texts that could hardly be read in tongues no longer spoken in any realm. He went to the dead, buried library on Niflheimr, hunted through parchment scrolls. They warned of the dangers of Limbo and its inhabitants. They hinted at the destructive potential of a spell like the one lurking within his lover.
None, none, told him how it might be survived.
Steve looked pale, when he returned, though he insisted that he felt fine. “I’m worried about you,” he said. “What’s going on?”
Loki pulled him into a kiss instead of answering, pressed his lips hard against Steve’s warm mouth, imagined he could taste the poison tang of the curse. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to scream. How can the world be so cruel as to do this-
He checked. The thing had grown, was now the size of a small child. Its tendrils wove into Steve’s lungs and down his spine. Loki swallowed hard.
“Nothing,” he said, to Steve, caressing his cheekbones and leaning forward to rest their foreheads together. “It is nothing.”
Steve gave him a narrow-eyed, unconvinced look. “Something’s going on with you,” he said, but then sighed. “You’ll tell me eventually, right? If it’s important.”
Almost, Loki said it then. Almost. “I will,” he said.
“What are we going to do,” Banner said, quietly. Loki did not want to be here. He wanted to be with Steve, wanted to curl up in bed with him, pressed together, bodies moving against one another. Spending every moment he could with his lover.
“Whatever we do, Steve dies,” Barton said. His eyes were full of hatred as he looked at Loki, and Loki looked back, accepting it, acknowledging it. “What does it matter?”
Tony cleared his throat. “Mostly because this – thing, apparently, if it grows up completely, is going to unleash something pretty fucking nasty. Implosion in Midtown nasty. Hundreds of dead civilians nasty. Did I get that right?”
The words stuck in Loki’s throat. “Yes.”
“Shouldn’t we take this to Steve?” Banner asked. “I think he has a right to get to decide-”
“No,” Loki said. The word came out harsher than he meant it to. They all looked at him. Loki could look at them all except Thor, Thor whose eyes bled with sympathy, with pain. “No. You will not tell him.”
“What the fuck are you saying,” Barton said, ferocious, angry. “That we’re going to assassinate our own teammate?”
“No,” Loki said, keeping his voice quiet. “You will not.”
“So what, then,” Tony said, his voice sharp. “What’s your great idea-”
Loki folded his hands carefully in his lap. “I will.”
Thor argued longest and loudest, but Loki wore him down, eventually. It is what I do, he said, even and calm. Isn’t it? I kill what I love. You ought to know that.
The others, he thought, were too tired, too unhappy, too angry. They didn’t have the words to deny him. And he made it clear that if they tried, he had few compunctions about drastic measures.
Loki retreated to Steve’s room, where he found him sitting at his desk, a hand pressed to his chest. “Steve?” he said, heart jumping with sudden fear, but Steve turned, smiling, standing.
“Loki,” he said, sounding pleased, relieved, joyful. Ah, Norns. “It’s nothing. Just a little twinge. You don’t think my asthma’s coming back, do you?”
“No,” Loki said, “no, I do not. It is not permitted. And if it should try, I should most certainly forbid it.” The words spilled from his tongue, easy and foolish, and Steve smiled, laughed a little.
“You’re in an odd mood,” he said, cocking his head. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing, at the moment,” Loki said, and added a lascivious grin. “Though you might, if you were so inclined…”
Steve’s face brightened, flushed, but he reached out and pulled Loki further into his room, drew him into a slow, deep kiss. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” he asked, as he pulled away, eyebrows furrowed in clear worry. “You’ve been…strange. Sad, maybe.”
Loki answered him with a kiss instead of words. “Do you know, Captain,” he murmured, when he was sure Steve was breathless and distracted but still listening. “I think I might love you?”
Steve’s breath hitched. “Just ‘might?’” He said, after a moment, not quite light enough to be convincing, but his mouth was warm on Loki’s neck, not demanding an answer. Loki gave it anyway, closing his stinging eyes.
“I do,” he said. “I have. I will. Remember that of me.”
He pushed Steve back onto his bed and took him apart with hands and mouth and tongue. He teleported them to Loki’s bed and rolled to his back, offering himself for Steve to claim. Loki had always scoffed at the notion of making love but he thought, perhaps, it might be appropriate for the things they did that night. He could see the awe in Steve’s eyes. The tenderness. The love he’d never quite known how to believe or accept.
The alarm went off the next morning and Loki caught Steve’s wrist as he rose to go. “Let me come with you,” he said. Steve looked at him, startled, and then a smile bloomed.
“Of course,” he said. “We’d – I’d – love your help.”
Loki summoned his armor. When Steve went into the bathroom, he summoned a blade as well. Not one of his daggers; no. Something better. Purer. A warrior’s weapon.
The fight went by too quickly. It seemed easy, like breathing. The other Avengers did not question his presence, though Barton’s hand lingered by his quiver for a moment when he first appeared. He fought with Thor, the two of them moving seamlessly together. Fought with Steve, movements fluid and coordinated around and past each other, as when they sparred.
It was over so soon.
Steve came over to him, smiling. A moment’s check told him that the curse was still growing, near maturity. He didn’t have much time.
Didn’t ever have time.
“Loki,” Steve said, with feeling. “You were fantastic.”
It hurt to breathe. He took a step forward. “Was I?” he said, and his voice sounded faint and strange. The others were a slight distance away, not paying attention. Thor would turn soon, and he would guess, would know.
“You were,” Steve said, firmly. “No one can argue that you aren’t an asset in the field.” He paused, and stepped close, reaching out to touch Loki’s jaw, his shield hanging at his side. “And it means a lot to me.”
Loki closed his eyes. He could feel his heart stagger in his chest and felt Steve still.
“Loki?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
Loki reached out and pulled Steve into an embrace, resting his chin on his shoulder. “Steve,” he said, and stopped. “I – will understand if you cannot, but please try to forgive me.”
“Forgive you wh-”
The sword slid easily through Steve’s body. He felt Steve stiffen and gasp against him, and was glad that he could not see the expression of surprise, pain, betrayal. He clasped the back of Steve’s neck in one hand, hardly feeling the blade slide into his own body, impaling them together.
Spelled to be fatal. He had never meant to survive this.
“Loki?” Steve gasped, in his ear, and he sounded confused. Not angry. “What…”
Loki felt himself shatter. He felt Steve’s body shudder, felt the answering quiver of the sword through him. Somewhere he could hear Thor. Screaming.
His own tears spilling down his cheeks felt warm.
He closed his eyes.