Note: This is angsty. Very angsty. Read at your own risk. And if you do, please comment. :)

Loki stood in the back of the room watching the familiar silhouettes of the Avengers as they spoke in hushed whispers while congregated around the open casket. They were as he remembered them, but older, so much older, and while he never held any love for them, it pained him to see such worthy adversaries torn down by time while he remained unaffected. He had seen others who bore the name of the Avengers now, younger, more agile men and women, but they would never hold a candle to those who thwarted a god time after time.

Thor stood amongst them, his red cape a bright contrast to the others' black garb. Thor, unchanged as well. Thor, towering around them, bright and strong while they were gray and papery and weak. He knew without a doubt that Thor, ever empathetic, felt the mortal fragility of his comrades more so than Loki did. He wondered how the Thunderer could smile, even sadly, when one of his own lay dead only feet away, when the others already had a foot in their graves.

Thor noticed him and placed his hand on the Widow's shoulder, interrupting her words. She followed his gaze. Her eyes narrowed, and while wrinkles surrounded them now, time had done nothing to erase them of their sharpness. Loki nodded his head, and after a moment of careful calculation, the Widow returned the gesture. Thor let his hand fall away from her thin shoulder before he approached Loki.

"Brother," he said, smile gone though his eyes lit with something Loki couldn't place. "You've come to pay your respects."

"You do not seem surprised," Loki replied tersely. "Did he tell you, then?"

Thor smiled crookedly. "He would admit nothing, though I suspected."

Loki snorted. "Typical of him, I suppose," he said, then tilted his head. "Am I welcome here, or would you have me leave before the others notice my presence?"

"They suspected, as well." Thor turned to study his comrades, frowning.

Loki's chest tightened. "Enough of these paltry pleasantries. I would see him."

Thor's frown deepened. "Loki—"

"I would see him, Thor," Loki whispered, cutting the future King of Asgard off, hands balled into fists at his sides. "I would see him now."

Thor nodded, and while his expression remained stoic, his eyes gleamed. "Allow me to alert the others to your presence before you step forward."

Loki watched his brother gently draw the attention of the Avengers to his existence. They all turned, one by one, to study him. He allowed it, even opened his arms wide, palms out, to show that he was unarmed. He traced all the lines of their faces with his eyes, noted the wasting muscle and gossamer-like skin. The Hawk was hunched over; the Widow's hair, once flaming, was doused with silver; the doctor with the beast inside of him wasn't as aged as the others, but exhaustion marred his face.

Captain Rogers stepped forward. He, like the doctor, was not as changed as the others, but Loki could see the weight that pressed upon him even though the soldier stood straight and proud. He didn't smile, just stared, before he said, "We don't want trouble, Loki. Not today."

"I do not come to offer trouble to you or yours, Captain," Loki replied quietly and licked his lips. "I have only come to say farewell."

The Captain watched him for another long moment before he nodded slowly. "All right. Welcome, then."

Without responding, Loki walked forward, passing them by, and stopped at the casket.

Pale and cold, the Man of Iron lay with his eyes and lips glued shut. Like the others, time had not been kind to Tony Stark. His hair, once dark and lustrous, was thin and grayed, and even in the stiffness of death, deep wrinkles lined his face. His expertly tailored suit couldn't hide the thinness of his form. Around the scent of chemicals used for preservation, Loki could smell the lingering stench of sickness and decay. It made his stomach churn.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and reached out, trailing his fingertips along the dead man's face. Alive, Stark had been a furnace— his skin always burned against the Jotun chill that permeated Loki's Aesir glamour, and the mortal, curse him, had never shied away, instead wrapping himself around the god and reveling in the warring sensations. He was cold now, though, even to Loki's touch.

Loki exhaled shakily. He'd been surprised, upon his return to Midgard, to realize that nearly two decades had passed since he last saw Tony Stark. Time had not moved the same for him, skewed by magic and the temporal flow of different realms. And he was Asgardian, after all— what was twenty years to a god but a single minute of a Midgardian day?

And yet, it still hurt. He hadn't expected himself to feel so raw, but the longer he stared at the face of his former lover, a face that was but was not Tony's, the worse it became. The loss stung and hollowed him out until his chest ached with the emptiness of it. There was no one like Anthony Stark in all of the Nine Realms, nor in the darker places in between. Loki cupped Stark's cheek, so very cold against his palm, and cursed himself for leaving that spring day while Stark still slept. He hadn't planned to be gone so long. He hadn't even said goodbye.

The excuses turned acidic. They burned.

"You should have called for me," Loki hissed, leaning forward until his hair curtained his face, hiding his misery from the others.

Loki stiffened when he felt a familiar, heavy hand land on his shoulder.

"Brother," Thor said quietly.

Before he could reign in his self control, Loki spun towards him, grabbing Thor's cape and dragging him forward until the toes of their boots touched. "I would have saved him," he snarled, knuckles bleached and aching from the grip he had on the Thunderer's clothing. "Had I known, I would have saved him."

Thor stared down at him pityingly, his brows drawn together and his lips turned down. "It is all right, brother. He did not blame you."

Loki laughed, bitter and ugly. "You could have called for me sooner if you suspected, Thor. If you knew the extent of my feelings, you could have called for me. You had twenty of his years to watch him wither and die, and yet you did not find me until it was too late." Loki's lips trembled and he bared his teeth to keep them still. "Why did you wait until he was already dead before you reached out to me?"

Thor opened his mouth, closed it, and just gazed down at Loki ashamedly.

"It's not his fault. Tony didn't want you to be around."

Loki snapped his head to the side, anger doused and wretchedness taking hold again so tightly he could hardly breathe. An elegant, finely-aged Pepper Potts stood in the doorway. She smiled sadly, her face as time-worn as the others, and it made Loki burn all the more, so he drew magic around himself, prepared to leave and to spare himself any more torture.

"He told me everything," she said, her hands clasped together in front of her. "He told me everything about the two of you. He loved you. He missed you."

Loki flinched like he'd been struck. "Then why?" Loki implored, his voice so rough it cracked. "Why did he not wish me to be here?"

Pepper shook her head, and the motion trickled through her entire body until even her hands shook. "He made Thor promise not to find you until he was gone. He wrote it in his will. He said you would have hated him if he tethered you down, but honestly, I think he was too proud and too ashamed. He didn't want you see him the way he was. It was ugly at the end. Everything just shut down." She swallowed thickly.

The magic prickled at his skin, begging him to leave, but Loki couldn't bring himself to do it. He took a step towards Pepper, then another, and his eyes widened in surprise when she matched his steps until they stood no more than a foot from one another.

"I would have given him immortality," he whispered. A part of him, the part drowning in desperation and despair, needed the woman who Tony Stark called his best friend and confidant, a woman he had loved, to understand. "I would have stolen every single apple from Idunn if he had asked it of me."

Pepper just nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks. "I know. I believe you."

"Did he?" Loki whispered. "Did he know?"

She nodded, lips quivering so hard her words were almost slurred. "Yes."

Loki turned back towards the corpse of his former lover and felt tears, unbidden and unwanted, sting his eyes. He did not address Midgard's heroes who once stood against him but now stood alongside him, their faces crumpled in pity, grief, and a heavy commiseration. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all— the God of Mischief, taking comfort in the presence of his former enemies. Maybe they would be his enemies again, Loki mused darkly. Tony Stark had always been the buffer that kept them safe from his rage, even if they did not know it at the time.

"One time," the Hawk interjected into the silence, "Tony made me arrows that were supposed to explode. And they did. Except they also were filled with flame retardant confetti. Rainbow confetti."

"He coated my shield in a glow-in-the-dark finish," the Captain added with a soft chuckle.

With a grimace, the doctor supplied, "He just… poked me all the time."

"He knew better than to play any of his juvenile pranks on me," the Widow smirked.

"Did I ever tell you about the invisible ink pens?" Pepper asked, sniffling. "He signed all of these documents, and by the time I got back to the office, all of the signatures had vanished."

Everyone laughed, and they shared stories, and Loki did not sneer when Thor placed another hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He couldn't help but wonder, as they settled into a tense peace, if this was Tony Stark's final performance because really, who else but the genius mortal who had captivated a god could bend reality enough to pair a villain with his mortal enemies?