Loki Misses the Asgardian Prison System

Chapter 177

He knows, to some degree, that the stairwell is not the place to break down.

It's more private than the conference room, of course. He knew as soon as he got the text that he had to get out of there. But it's still not private. Anybody could walk in at any moment while he's here.

And, of course, they do, because that's just his luck.

"Steve?" Loki says timidly.

Steve doesn't look up, his face buried in his hands. It's oddly comforting to know that it's just Loki who came after him. He'd hate for somebody who actually has their shit together to see him like this.

"Steve, are you alright?" Loki asks.

Steve forces himself to nod. "Yeah," he says into his hands. His voice feels raw, but he hasn't been crying – not yet, at least; he hopes it will last. He's not sure he believes it will.

"I presume this isn't about the Accords," Loki says, almost cautiously.

Steve just shakes his head.

Loki hesitates; then, "Would you like to talk about it?"

Again, Steve shakes his head. He doesn't want to talk about it. He wouldn't know how to.

Loki's quiet for a few moments. "Is..." He pauses, uncertain. "Is there anything I can do? Would you like me to stay, or...?"

Steve lets out a long breath. No, there's nothing Loki can do. Of course there's not. He can't raise the dead. He can't bring her back. But...

Steve reluctantly lowers his hands from his face, and he's met with the sight of a very concerned friend. "Sit with me?"

"Of course," Loki says, not a moment of hesitation in his answer.

So Loki sits down on the stairs, and Steve sits down beside him. He doesn't know what else to do, so he just buries his head in his hands once more – but still, he doesn't cry. He can't cry. It's not going to fix the problem. It's not going to fill this gaping hole in his chest, this emptiness inside of him. It's not going to bring her back. So what's the point?

He doesn't know how long they sit there, but after a while, Loki rests an arm around his shoulders. It's such an unusual move for him, and Steve could almost feel the hesitation, but he did it anyway. He did it because he thought it might make Steve feel better. And though it really doesn't, though it does nothing to fix the ache he feels, it kind of... does help, in a weird way. It helps that he would think to do that. It helps that he would put aside his own discomfort and his own uncertainty to do it.

Steve takes a deep breath. He's going to need it if he plans to say this out loud.

"She's dead," he mumbles.

That was stupid.

That means nothing.

Now he's going to have to say it again, in a way that's not so vague so that Loki can actually understand it–

"Peggy Carter?" Loki asks quietly.

Or maybe he won't have to say it. That's a relief, however minor it is. He just nods instead.

"I'm sorry," Loki says quietly. "I can only imagine how that feels."

Awful, he wants to say. Like somebody stuck their arm through his chest and ripped out his heart with their bare hand.

But he doesn't say that. Of course he doesn't say that. He's not even sure he has the right to, if he's being honest. He hardly visits her – certainly not as often as he should. And now he can't. Now he can only see her one more time: at the funeral, to say his final farewell.

He should have gone sooner.

He should have said goodbye while she was still with him.

It's the least he could have done, and he didn't even do that.

He chokes out a sob before he can stop himself, and he bites his lip to keep from making that same mistake again.

"I don't know if this will help," Loki says, "but you've seen me cry many, many times. I certainly will not judge you for doing the same."

"I know you won't," Steve mumbles. "I'm not worried about it."

"What are you worried about, if you don't mind my asking?"

Steve lets out a long breath. "I'm worried that once I start, I might not be able to stop."

Loki lets out a long breath, and all he does is hug him closer. It means more than any words could.

~~~

"You don't have to do it," Pietro tells his sister.

"I know," Wanda says quietly, "but I feel like I do. I feel like I should. After what I did..."

"'What you did' was save yourself and save Rogers and save all those people on the ground," Pietro says. "You are not the reason people got hurt. People were going to get hurt whether you stepped in or not."

Wanda lets out a shaky breath, and Pietro reaches across the bed and takes her hands in his own. He doesn't like to see her like this. If he could take this pain away from her, if he could give it to himself instead, he would do it in a heartbeat. Nothing hurts him more than seeing his sister suffer.

Wanda lowers her gaze to their hands. "I wonder if it would have been different if we didn't go."

"If we didn't go, then HYDRA would have gotten the weapon, and things would be much worse," Pietro says. They had to be there. They had to stop Rumlow. They didn't have a choice.

"Not if somebody else had gone," Wanda says. "Maybe this wasn't an Avengers mission. If we'd told somebody else, maybe..."

Pietro sighs. "Wanda..."

"We went all the way to Africa for this," she says. "We had no reason to be there. We had no reason to take this problem into our own hands. Ross was right: we do ignore borders, and we take on missions without any input from anybody else – people who might know better – and now twelve people are dead because of it."

"And what if we had left it to somebody else?" Pietro asks. "What if we'd left it to the Lagos police or the Nigerian army, and what if more people died because of it?" He shakes his head. "We cannot count on anybody more than we can count on ourselves. After everything we've been through together, you must know that by now."

Wanda sighs and looks back up at him. "I'm going to sign them," she says quietly. "I'm sorry."

Pietro lets out a long breath. "I know you are."

"I'm sorry."

Pietro shakes his head. "You do what you have to," he says. "I'm just sorry you think this is the answer."