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When it was over, when all was said and done, the dust settled, the universe rebuilt, Steve walked away.
Not for good, he was quick to add. Only a short time. “I need...a break,” he said. “Just for a little while.”
Bucky tried to argue with him. Sam didn’t. “Leave your phone on,” he said simply, and Steve just nodded.
He skipped New York and went to Boston instead, then kept going north. He ended up on the coast and rented out a cottage a twenty minute walk from the ocean. He slept. He walked. After a while, he started painting. Just landscapes, no people.
Time didn’t heal all wounds. But it could heal some of them. Steve couldn’t claim he slept soundly, but he slept.
For maybe three months he was on his own, except for brief interactions with people at the grocery store, or on the trails to the estuary. Then he started noticing the feeling that he was being watched.
For a little while, Steve thought it was paranoia. Then he thought it might be one of his friends - Natasha, maybe, or Bucky - sneaking around to check in on him. But for some reason he had a feeling that wasn’t it.
There was something, out of the corner of his eye. A flicker, sometimes.
Steve was pretty sure magpies weren’t native to New Hampshire. He stared at the one perched on the bird feeder with narrowed eyes before going back inside.
A storm came howling off the ocean, bringing pouring rain and wind with it. Steve was hunkered down inside, eyeing the flickering lights, when someone knocked on the door.
He stood up, wondering if one of his neighbors had lost power, or had a tree fall, and walked over to open it.
“Good evening, Captain Rogers,” Loki said, soaking wet, arms wrapped around himself, naked, and shivering. “I don’t suppose I could come in?”
Steve went to the bathroom and brought out a towel, which he handed wordlessly to the dead man wringing his hair out in the kitchen sink. Loki took it with a polite, mild, “thank you,” and started drying himself off, apparently unselfconscious about his lack of clothing. Steve turned away, red-faced, and squeezed his eyes closed for a moment before opening them.
“What are you doing here?”
“I have no idea.”
“I thought you were dead,” Steve said.
“So did I.”
Steve swallowed hard. “Does Thor know?”
A long pause, then. “No,” he said finally. “He doesn’t.”
Steve took a deep, sharp, breath through his nose. “I’m going to call him.”
“Please don’t.”
It was the quiet of Loki’s voice, the simplicity of the request, that stopped Steve from reaching for his phone. Or at least checked him. He turned around and found that Loki was sitting down against the kitchen cabinet, towel wrapped around him like a shielding cape. Steve grabbed a blanket off the couch and brought it over.
“Why not,” he said, finally. And then, because he was sure now, “how long have you been watching me?”
Loki looked away. “A month, maybe.”
Steve stared at him, almost incredulous, and Loki shrugged. “I wasn’t looking for you.”
Steve looked him over again. Loki looked almost painfully skinny, his face drawn. He looked very different from when Steve had last seen him, despite the fact that he didn’t seem to have aged at all. There was something weary about his eyes, exhausted, all the consuming fire gone out.
He took the blanket and huddled into it, still looking at Steve, waiting.
“Why come now?” He asked, finally.
“I was cold,” Loki said. “And wet. And I remembered myself.” Remembered myself. Steve turned that over, trying to think what it might mean.
“Why can’t I tell Thor?” Steve asked. Loki closed his eyes and looked down.
“I will,” he said. “Just...not yet.”
Steve didn’t understand. He should ignore what Loki was saying, call Thor right now, tell him, your brother’s here, I don’t understand why but he’s here. Loki was shivering slightly, like he couldn’t get warm.
“As soon as the storm is over,” he said, “I’ll be gone.”
Steve was shaking his head before he decided to do it. “And go where?” He asked. Loki confirmed his guess by not answering.
The wind howled outside, and Loki flinched, glancing over his shoulder with wide eyes, toward the door. “It’s just the storm,” Steve said, and Loki glanced at him, wide-eyed. He took a breath. “Thor told me what happened.”
One of Loki’s hands twitched up like he was going to touch his throat. “Did he,” he said, voice hoarse.
“Yeah,” Steve said. “What do you remember?” It seemed to vary. How much people recalled of what had happened.
“Enough.” Loki’s shoulders hunched and Steve heard his breathing stutter. “I was dead. Now I am not. Again.” He coughed a weak laugh that sounded like it hurt. Steve ran a hand through his hair.
“I need to sleep,” he said. “You should, too. Take the couch.” Loki didn’t move, and Steve held out a hand. After a moment Loki took it, dragging himself with visible effort to his feet, still clutching the blanket that was all that was covering him. He looked dazed, shell-shocked.
Steve let him go. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said, and pulled away, walking back into the bedroom.
Rough night here, he texted Sam. Nasty storm. Then he plugged the phone in and pulled up the covers, one ear turned toward the other room.
Loki was still sleeping when Steve got up. He stared at him, curled up on Steve’s couch under a ratty blanket. After a moment he pulled out a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, laid them out, and then went for a run.
He was still there when Steve got back, though looking closely Steve could see slits of his eyes visible. He didn’t call him on it, though, just went to take a shower.
He half expected Loki would be gone when he emerged, but he hadn’t; his eyes were fully open, now, though he still hadn’t sat up.
“What now?” Steve asked.
“Good question.”
“Why won’t you contact Thor?” Steve asked again.
“You won’t understand.”
Steve crossed his arms. “Try me.”
Loki stared at Steve in silence for a long while, then closed his eyes again with a sigh. “I am not whole,” he said finally, not looking at Steve. “When I face him again, I do not want it to be as a half-mad shell.”
Steve...got it. He thought Loki was wrong, but he got it. He rubbed his temples. “So...so what?”
“Is it still raining?”
Steve glanced toward the windows. “No,” he said.
“Good,” Loki said. He stood, and walked out. Steve followed, a moment late, but soon enough to see him blur and flicker and - change.
A black fox bounded off his porch and toward the trees, pausing briefly to glance back, one paw lifted into the air, before it was gone. Steve’s heart pounded oddly, and he stood watching for several moments more before he went back inside.
“Your brother’s alive,” Steve told Thor. Crackling silence followed down the line, strained by distance.
“What?” Thor said finally, his voice blank.
“Loki,” Steve said. “He’s alive. He was here. Last night.” He paused, and for the sake of honesty added, “he asked me not to tell you.”
Thor made a choked, strangled sound. “He - what?”
“I don’t know,” Steve said. “I just know what I saw. I can’t explain it, Thor.”
More crackling silence. “I’m coming,” Thor said, his voice raw like an open wound. “Where are you?”
“Thor,” Steve said quickly. “I think - I think maybe you should wait.”
“Wait?”
“I know,” Steve said, closing his eyes. “I know. But - maybe just a little time. He’s not…” He didn’t know how to say he doesn’t want you to see him like this without hurting Thor worse. Didn’t know how to explain why it even mattered to him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“If this is some trick-”
“It’s not,” Steve said. “I swear it’s not. Thor...this is real.”
He heard Thor make a sound, wretchedly like a sob. “But you tell me to stay away.”
“Just for now,” Steve made himself say. “Just...soon, all right? Soon.”
When he hung up the phone, he wanted to cry. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to scream at Loki, who wasn’t even here--
“You told him.”
He turned around, sharp, to see Loki standing in his door. Clothed, this time, in what must be some kind of Asgardian casualwear. “It’s cruel,” he said flatly. “Keeping him in the dark. You have no idea what he’s feeling right now.”
“But you told him not to come,” Loki said. Steve grit his teeth.
“If he did,” he said, “you’d just run, wouldn’t you?”
Loki looked away. “I am tired of running,” he said, and then let out another one of those hoarse, humorless laughs. “Destiny still arrives.”
Steve frowned, but Loki shook himself and seemed to refocus.
“It’s supposed to storm again tonight,” Steve said. “You shouldn’t stay out in it. Even foxes get cold.”
Loki’s eyebrows rose, just a fraction. “You’re inviting me into your house?”
“You invited yourself,” Steve said, gesturing at the open door. “I’m just saying you can stay.” He could almost hear Bucky in his head saying really, Steve? but he ignored it. Loki was looking at him like he was thinking the same thing.
“Don’t leave your dirty dishes in the sink,” Steve said. “And shut the door. You’re letting all the warm air out.”
Steve woke up crying from a dream of kneeling in Bucky’s ashes, looking around himself and watching his friends blow away, all of them, one after another, dissipating into dust.
He lay in bed breathing hard for a long while before standing up to stumble to the bathroom, intending to splash water on his face.
He heard someone choking in the living room and jerked, adrenaline flooding him before he remembered that Loki was here, and then it hit that Loki was choking. He was already in the living room by the time he’d put it together and turned on the light to see Loki tangled in two different blankets, twitching and making those awful choking noises, eyelids fluttering wildly. “Loki,” Steve said loudly, not stupid enough to try to shake him. “Wake up!”
At least that worked on the first try. Loki heaved in a clean breath, half sitting up and staring at Steve with wild eyes before collapsing back down, staring up at the ceiling.
You too? Steve thought, maybe a little hysterically, but it shouldn’t be that surprising. They all had nightmares. All of them true.
One of Loki’s hands was rubbing his throat absently, but he pulled it quickly away when he noticed Steve looking. Maybe something showed on his face, though, because Loki said, “he snapped my neck. After crushing my windpipe. It leaves an impression.” His voice only trembled a little at the beginning. Steve felt briefly ill.
He imagined being Thor. Watching that. Wanted to grab Loki and say do you really think this is better for him, don’t you think it’s more important for him to be able to see you and know you’re alive than to have you all better?
Of course, wasn’t that part of what he was doing here? He couldn’t face the world. Even thinking about going back made him panic.
He wasn’t going to burden anyone with that.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said. Loki seemed surprised.
“What for?”
Steve shook his head. “I might make some tea. Do you want any?”
“Tea?” Loki said blankly. Steve half smiled, though it hurt his face to do it.
“I’ll make you some, and you can decide if you like it.”
All Loki said was, “it’s all right,” but when he drank the last of it he made his way over to the stove and put on the kettle for more.
They didn’t talk, but neither of them went back to sleep.
It was astonishing how quickly Steve got used to Loki being around.
It helped that he didn’t talk much. He kept to himself, most of the time, walking softly, and did not ask for much of anything.
He was quiet, he stayed clean, and he didn’t ask too many questions. For a former enemy, he was a very good houseguest.
And he didn’t make much of an enemy now.
Steve wrote down Thor’s phone number and stuck it on the fridge, obviously labeled. He wanted Loki to know it was there, and he had to, but he’d never so much as glanced at it. Steve’s frustrations with that fact ebbed and flowed.
One evening, apparently unprompted, Loki made dinner for them both. Steve stared at him, frowning.
“What’s the occasion?” He asked, finally.
“None,” Loki said. “Only that you have been hosting me, and it struck me that I ought to do more to repay you.”
“That’s...nice,” Steve said slowly. Loki’s lips spasmed in a strange way.
“I have my moments,” he said, very dryly, and Steve realized that spasm might have been the start of a smile.
“Do you want to come on a walk with me?” Steve asked Loki, the next day. “There’s a pretty easy one that goes over by the estuary.”
“Yes,” Loki said after a moment, his head cocked slightly to the side. “I’d like that.”
Steve woke up certain he wasn’t alone, and saw Loki standing in the door to his room, arms wrapped around himself. “I heard you,” he said quietly. “You were weeping.”
Steve put a hand over his eyes and took a deep breath. “And you were just going to stand there watching?” He asked harshly. Loki twitched, not quite a flinch.
“I don’t know how to help,” Loki said, and Steve couldn’t tell if it was a general statement or an excuse. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“It’s fine.” He heard Loki shift, and forced himself to look up. “What is it?”
“I don’t want to be alone right now,” Loki said. Steve’s shoulders slumped.
“Yeah,” he said, honestly. “Me neither.”
He sat up slowly, feeling like his body was aching. Loki walked over, equally slowly. Steve gestured at the bed. “Sit down?”
Loki sat. His hands twisted together and he looked at Steve sidelong.
“I dreamwalked to Thor and told him I was alive,” Loki said, his voice distant.
“That’s...good,” Steve said cautiously, because Loki didn’t sound like he was happy.
“It should be.” Loki’s head bent forward. Steve reached out to touch him, stopped, pulled back.
Then reached out again. Loki moved just slightly toward him so his shoulder brushed Steve’s hand.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly. “About whoever you lost.”
Steve’s nose stung and he cleared his throat. “They came back.”
Loki’s smile looked like it hurt. “That doesn’t mean they weren’t lost.”
Steve supposed there was a kind of truth to that. “I’m sorry,” he said. “About what happened to you.”
“I’m not.” Loki looked down at his knees. “It was the only thing I could do.”
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”
Loki’s expression screwed up, momentarily, like he was trying not to break. Then relaxed. “Your world is lucky to have you, Steve Rogers,” he said softly.
Sometimes I wonder, Steve thought, but no, that wasn’t right. Lately it was more I wish the world could get by on its own.
“Sometimes I’d rather the world didn’t need me,” Steve said. Loki glanced at him, and Steve huffed. “Surprised? I can be selfish, too.”
“And maybe you should be,” Loki said. His eyes closed again, his head bowed.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re all better,” Steve said. “Not to Thor. All that matters to him is having you back.”
“I know,” Loki said softly. There was no warning in his voice, but Steve knew somehow, anyway, not to press further.
They sat there like that, in mutual quiet.
Steve didn’t remember drifting off.
He woke up in the morning with Loki’s nose pressed against his shoulder, breathing deep and slow. Practically snuggling. Something warm was nestled in Steve’s chest. Outside, he could hear the birds starting to wake up.