“There is no pain so great as the memory
of joy in present grief.”
-Aeschylus
The hardest part of anything, he realized, was remembering those you vowed never to forget, but wished so desperately you could.
There are times, Loki knew (he’d had many), where death seems a welcome alternative to the simple agony of living. It was in those times that the only thing that cared enough to stay was the bottle; where breathing (living) hurt more than dying ever could; where the remembrance of lips against his skin scorched him faster than the ice in his veins could protect him.
He ran his fingertips across his lips, swore he could feel the imprint where Anthony had touched his own to Loki’s for the last time.
His fingers tightened around the delicate neck of the bottle and he watched, mesmerized, as hairline fissures spider-webbed slowly beneath his fingertips; found it impossible to look away as realization struck; he could crush the bottle within his fingers without a second thought, such a simple little thing, but nowadays, it was the only thing keeping him from cracking apart; the only thing strong enough to stop him from shattering completely.
The only thing that allowed him to forget enough that he couldn’t remember why he wanted to forget at all.
But then, whiskey always had been a favorite of Anthony’s (even his escape was a memory of the one he was escaping from).
Four hundred years later, and Loki could still remember what Anthony’s lips had felt like against his own, painted crimson by the blood that stained them.
He could still smell the metal and coconut in the air as Anthony had removed the arc reactor from his chest and cupped both Loki’s hands round it (a promise never to forget; as if he could ever forget…as if that was an option at all).
He could still hear the weakly whispered “I love you” that Anthony had wasted his last breath on (as if Loki didn’t know already).
Four hundred years later, and it still hurt.
He pretended, of course, even though the only person he had to pretend for was himself.
He’d been alone these past years, but that was how it should be; if he couldn’t be with Anthony, there was nothing for him.
Not now.
Not anymore.
Loki made his way down to Anthony’s lab, stumbling over one of the Ironman gauntlets lying useless on the cold concrete beneath his feet
He turned his gaze round the empty lab; pretended he wasn’t just as cold and empty inside as it was, filled with it’s half built little nothings that had somehow become Loki’s everything.
He stepped over broken bits of metal and burned out wiring, to where the arc reactor sat in the center of the room on a glass pedestal where it would cast it’s light out beautifully.
It still shone; hadn’t stopped since Anthony’s death, and Loki hated how the mad inventor’s metal heart (created from a box of scrap metal in a cave) had outlasted him.
Hated how the silver glow reminded him of everything he had lost.
But he wouldn’t rid of it; couldn’t rid of it. Not when it was a piece of Anthony; not when the inventor had gone to the trouble of removing it to give to Loki as some parting gift he’d never asked for.
No, Loki stood and he watched it; watched his reflection in the reactor’s glass face move its hand up and take a drink from the bottle in its hand.
He knelt before the reactor and squeezed his fingers round the neck of the bottle; shattered it completely.
He took the largest piece of glass and slit the shard across his wrists, but he felt no pain, only relief.
He watched, mesmerized as crimson liquid pooled on the floor beneath him, and he watched until he could watch no more and gravity took him, pulled him to the floor.
And he smiled.
Anthony would be waiting for him; Anthony had said he would always wait.
And Anthony always kept his promises.
As the god’s eyes fell closed and he returned to the one who had been waiting four hundred years, the light of the arc reactor flickered out, casting darkness out over the half finished projects and empty whiskey bottles and the body of the Jotun that had fallen in love with a mortal.