#you know ive forgotten what her voice sounds like but i remember the exact fond look on her face she'd have when i was misbehaving

[transjohnnycash]

Ah. The grieving

[rqgnarok]

in search of redemption; part iv ­­­– loki laufeyson

part i / part ii / part iii

fandom: the avengers ft. xmen (marvel)

words: 2456

warnings: y’all know the drill, talk about death, wars, infinity war spoilers, the whole deal, MUTANT!IMMORTAL!XAVIER!READER

summary: some old lovers meet again.

author's note below.

She wheels into the room with the mentality that she has nothing to lose, and as the door closes swiftly behind her, she can’t help but stare at Loki’s back as the muscles tense, alert that there are now two people in the room. He’s waiting, she knows, for her to talk or to figure out who it is that comes to try and get into his head, after Fury and Romanoff and his brother. Neither of those things happen, and (Y/N) knows him well enough to know he’s hiding his curiosity behind a skilled mask of boredom, the one that looks back at her when their eyes finally meet.

 “Well, alright.”

 It’s not the words, or the roll of his tongue while a malicious smirk creeps at his lips, but the mere sound of his voice what throws (Y/N) off. Besides the aching throbs she’s learned to recognize as her body keeping her alive, she knows that the uncomfortable feeling rising at her throat is the nostalgia of seeing Loki again.

 She remains silent, though, not trusting herself at her current state to answer Loki’s mischievous taunts and hopes that her posture resembles some kind of calm facade real enough to fool the God of Lies himself.

 Loki’s not looking his best, either. (Y/N) remembers all of the God’s stages before and after New York and she knows that the battle had drained him more than he’d liked to admit. The thinning hair, dark shadows underneath his eyes, scraped knuckles and paler, sharper than usual features tells her she’s correct about her assumptions, having in front of her a much weaker version of the God she has grown so fond of.

 Right now, he looks younger, sure, but there’s a darkness in his eyes (Y/N) hadn’t gotten to know personally. There are burdens that seem to heavy his posture, being lied to his whole life about who he really is and his father’s hatred still haunting his character in a way (Y/N) can’t imagine. All scars, all choices that had taken him to right here, right now. Him, in a cage and the fate of the world in his hands while (Y/N), from the outside looking in, suffering still from future consequences of what this oncoming battle means for both of them and for the rest of humanity.

 They watch each other, like prey and hunted, though (Y/N) isn’t sure who is which. Mutant and God, wondering who will lose the staring match first. To Loki, it makes no sense why the Avengers would send the weakest, most pathetic member of their team to talk him down from the inevitable.

 Or so he thought. He has no idea how stubborn a time traveling mutant on the verge of death can be. (Y/N) herself is still amazed by how far this plan has actually gone, even with her body begging her to let go and accept the fate she’s been aching for almost since she first got the gift of immortality in the first place.

 “Cat got your tongue?” he teases with the exact amount of malice to make someone flinch, eyes sharp and voice cold with a twinge of mean amusement. This detachment makes (Y/N) remind herself that this isn’t the man she knows and loves, rather a previous version of him that doesn’t know better. She keeps on staring, silently, mostly just to annoy him. “Is your Earth really so defenseless that they’d thought to bring the weakest looking mortal they could find and try to soften my heart?”

 “Mutant,” is all (Y/N) answers, voice sure and almost bored, seemingly unaffected by Loki’s taunts. His face blanks for a second, almost unnoticeable, and (Y/N) enjoys the temporary feeling of having the upper hand.

 “I beg your pardon?” Loki composes himself quickly enough, managing to look as cool as nonchalant as the Norse God of Mischief can be when trapped in a cage that’s supposed to hold a man five times his size.

 “The weakest looking mutant they could find. If you know me, I’m anything but mortal,” she hesitates for a second, rolls her eyes at the irony as she leans back against the wheelchair’s backseat and breathes in harshly. It’s as if her body tried to embarrass her just by doing otherwise of what (Y/N) just stated. Somewhat sheepishly, she adds. “Well, usually. I’ve had better days.”

 “Clearly,” he scoffs, looking her over and easily remaining unamused at what he sees. (Y/N) would dare to feel self-conscious if she had no knowledge of the previous days full of hectic fighting and slaughter. She’s about to die, she can look however the hell she pleases. “I’ve heard great things about your kind. I’m afraid I don’t see any on you, yet.”

 “You’re not exactly famous yourself, Reindeer Games,” her fondness for Loki gets the best of her and the nickname slips past her mouth accidentally, but she makes sure not to react at her mistake, and the god doesn’t seem to care about it either. “At least not for the right reasons, anyway.”

 “I will be, soon enough,” his eyes shine with the false promise of better days that was wrongly forced into his mind. Xavier pities him yet knows how it is the desperation of belonging somewhere what brought him down this path. His kingdom and people, his own family rejected him, so he has no option but to build one of his own, no matter what it takes.

 That’s his brilliant idea, ignorant of what his actions could do to the rest of the universe. Loki continues, with the same old argument (Y/N) could swear he has either memorized or written down somewhere. “All I’ve seen from the moment I arrived on Earth is your desperate need of a better ruler. Mutants, as well.” He adds somewhat hastily, slightly smirking at himself at the reference of what they had talked about less than a few minutes ago.

 “You?” (Y/N) questions, scoffs with an eyebrow raised in what she feels is such a Stark like way, the billionaire genius would be proud of having such an influence on the time traveler. Loki’s jaw tightens in what (Y/N) recognizes as clear annoyance. She doesn’t need to know him well enough to realize that the conversation is starting to get into his nerves. The cool, tranquil version of Loki is long gone in just the blink of an eye. “You’re the one who’s gonna raise us from perdition?”

 “If not me, then who? One of you mutants?” It’s the insult to her people what makes (Y/N) show another emotion rather than indifference or mean amusement, but just as Loki smirks, thinking he has some, if any sort of leverage against her, the mutant finds the need of rushing the team’s plan to the point.

 “Thanos,” the name hurts to say, is as uncomfortable on the mutant’s tongue as she knows it’ll be in the future. Loki stills, either thrown off at the lack of knowledge or surprised at (Y/N)’s abundance of it, she can’t tell. Her frown deepens in search of a reaction, any kind of tell she’s already familiar with that can help her figure him out, but Loki gives nothing else away. “The Mad Titan? The Dark Lord? The most powerful being in the universe. Your employer?”

 “I am my own-” he flares with an anger so harsh, (Y/N)’s afraid he’ll let his bluish skin show in the heat of the moment, but he stills and hesitates when it comes to describing himself. (Y/N) momentarily wishes, not for the first time in her life, that she had her father’s powers to know whatever’s going through his mind. My own person. God, monster, traitor. I am alone-

 “Are you really so oblivious of who you’re doing this for?” (Y/N) wonders, soft and concerned as a wave of pain, which she had managed to avoid ever since she stepped into Loki’s cage, crashes over her and forces her to stand down momentarily as she pulls herself together with incredible difficulty. She feels herself losing the composure of the mighty Avenger coming in to talk down Earth’s current biggest threat, and starts engaging with him as if she were talking to the man she already loves instead of the one she’ll learn to.

 Meanwhile, there’s something about her Loki can’t decipher. The way she holds herself together, even if she just admitted is not her best moment, makes him infer that there’s something she knows that he doesn’t. He’s not used to not being the smartest guy in the room. Also, there’s something about her eyes, wise and warm that reminds him of his own mother. Except the usual memory of her is tainted now, and he’s left with a bitterness planted in him that makes him unable to rest easy.

 “You’re so blinded by own endgame, do you honestly believe that’ll make you a good ruler?”

 “You sound just like my dear father,” Loki sneers with fake affection towards his adoptive family, and (Y/N) herself can’t help but flinch. After enduring all his taunts, this is what breaks her. She’s not here to patronize him, let alone indulge him even further to try and conquer the world, and somehow, she had forgotten that in the span of time since this conversation first began.

 Loki, who had been keeping a certain distance all through their discussion, nears the edge of the cage in slow, threatening steps, and leans one of his hands against the glass. His head is tipped down so he can glare back at (Y/N) comfortably enough. “Well, let me tell you something about my father, you weak excuse of a mutant, the moment I am out of this cage your fate will be the same as his. It’ll be hard to be this brash from six feet underground.”

 “Don’t get so cocky, God of Lies,” she glares back, all of the sudden losing her gentle exterior and tightening her grip on the chair, with an expression so intense mastered specifically like her uncle Erik’s. The resemblance between the old family friend and herself, after all this war and death and destruction, scares her more than she’d like to admit. “Even in my weakest form, I will outlive you.”

 “You sound awfully sure of yourself,” he scoffs, but aware of how her muscles tensed at the mention of the future, her voice dropped a few octaves and the presence of some sort of energy tingling from her fingers, but not enough of it so it might really concern him. Her sureness of the inevitable end, though, that does catch his attention. “I think you might underestimate me when I go for what I want. What I deserve-”

 “Half the universe will be dead within less than 5 years, so you’d understand why what you deserve isn’t much of a concern of mine at the moment,” the phrase seems to have the wished effect on the Asgardian God, at least momentarily, who stills and swallows in a way (Y/N) has learned to recognize as the universal, silent way of saying: I am afraid.

 “What, cat got your tongue?” she throws Loki’s own words back at him when he fails to answer, or to react, at all. Loki breaks from his trance and shakes his head, as if silently scolding himself for allowing her to throw him so far off his rhythm. He remains mute, though. The fist that’s resting against the glass, tightens. “I sound sure of myself because I know what I’ve seen. The beginning of the end, the Battle of New York. Your neck, at Thanos’ hand, moments before he crushes you to the ground. I’ve seen it all.”

 And somehow, Loki believes her. There’s this crazed, desperate look in her eye that tells him more truth than her words can. Hands are gripping the sides of the wheelchair so tightly, with more force than the one she’s supposed to have, all cause of the memories of a few days before flashing through her head. He doesn’t want to believe her, his gut tells him that he should try to snap her neck in half as soon as he gets out of the cage, but he also recognizes this despair oh, so well.

 “Is that what they expect me to believe?” he asks, scoffing and as condescending as always, but with an undertone of worry and a smallness that was not there when he had threatened (Y/N) to death a few moments before. The mutant follows with her eyes the movement of his pale hand to caress the skin of his neck, the same one she’d cried on after Thanos had taken the life out of her lover. “Is that your power, mutant, do you see the future?”

 “I am the future, Lokes,” and there’s this moment of fond she can’t keep to herself, the nickname that had been only spoken in the privacy of their relationship emerges from her lips without her consent, and to Loki’s surprise, it sends a shiver down his spine. He retreats the slightest bit from the glass, but (Y/N), who’s searching for anything that might count as a reaction, notices. “I am the aftermath of this war, the result of what you do here, now. You can’t do this.”

 “Of all the strategies to stop me, this one is certainly the weakest,” Loki laughs, still somehow blinded by the reality that was promised to him and refusing to see further than his own goal. (Y/N) feels exhausted all the sudden, her side aching in wishes for her body to give up. “Begging for mercy? I thought the Avengers were smarter than this.”

 “We’re actually not,” (Y/N) scoffs, and the truth in her statement throws Loki off, but not more than when he watches her wobble out of the wheelchair and reach for the button that opens his cage. His mean smirk is wiped off his features, even if this might mean something positive for him; the weak mutant opening the doors of the new world for him, all he has to do is break her neck and he’ll be ready to go. “This is why we’re kinda doing it in the first place. Suicidal tendencies and all that, my uncle Erik would say. But then again, we are too far gone, this is really the only option we’ve got left.”

 The cage is open in the blink of an eye and Loki’s out and reaching to hold (Y/N) against the wall even quicker, snarling up at her as he holds her so highly up in the air, she’s barely able to breathe. Still, (Y/N) allows must of her weight to depend on the Asgardian God and he takes it in gladly, trusting that these are the mutant’s last moments living and breathing.

 “You really are a disgrace to your kind,” he sneers, his fingers crawling higher up her throat carefully, sharp green eyes watchful as always. The words that slip past his lips make (Y/N) feel so sick she almost forgets why she opened the cage and let him out in the first place. “I hope they remember you.”

 (Y/N) grins, exhausted and just a little bit beyond madness.

 Her trembling hand reaches for the side of Loki’s face, with whatever little strength she has left, brings him in and allows both their worlds to go black.

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Y’ALL I FINISHED WRITING SOMETHING, CAN U BELIEVE IT??????????

i feel like this is kind of a filler chapter, but i promise promise promise, it’s the last one before something actually interesting happens. it was supposed to happen here but i thought that if i wrote everything in here it would become too saturated and just annoy me to infinity.

so, i hope you’re still sticking w/ me throughout this project! i recently reread a draft i had for this part and kinda fell in love with it all over again. tell me what you think! i'm eager to listen to what you guys have to say.

as always, i'm not sure of when the next part will come out but i can assure you it will. in the meantime, my requests are always open and i'm always happy to keep writing.

love, as always,

-          e.

[ecotone99]

[SP] A.I. Miss You (Part One)

The twisted tragedy of one family’s use of technology to restore more than photos lost in a fire.

*****

i Public statement by Nathan da Costa, October 26, 2076:

The first time my sister died was in a fire with her family. I suppose it's only fitting it happened that way the second time around too.

ii It's a little known fact that Watson's Dispensary in Santa Carla, California was once known as Watson's Brothel and Opium Emporium. Marginally more relevant to the plot is the fact that Watson's also holds the record for "World's Largest Selection of Greeting Cards." Whether one wishes to offer gram-gram a half-assed birthday wish or whole-hearted support for another's full (or partial) conversion from innie to outie, Watson's is more than capable of selling you a piece of folded paper containing wholly unoriginal, utterly manufactured words that substitute genuine effort and emotion with convenience for only a modest fee. In fact, Nathan da Costa was so impressed by the sheer breadth and depth of modern greeting card technology that he hardly noticed the robot standing immediately to his right.

"What's the occasion?" the robot asked.

"My wife and I are on our way to visit my sister over in Hilldale," he said, glancing over to the robot. It was a petite thing, the robot. This lovely smile matched with an equally adorable bob cut and a drab, soul-sucking blue smock with a name tag that read: MARIA. "You're a Type-II."

"Correct," it chirped.

Nathan returned to the greeting cards, but continued talking anyway. "My sister had a Type-II. Total sweetheart."

"What was her name?"

"Rosie," he smiled.

"Where is Rosie now?"

Nathan considered this for a moment. "Not sure. Her fuel cell ruptured a few years back. Burned down half the house with the family still in it. So, probably the dump? Do they recycle--" He stopped himself, looked at Maria, and remembered what he was talking at. "I'm oversharing, aren't I?"

Maria processed this, determined it was most efficient to simply smile and nod, and did so.

"Yeah," Nathan said in that tone one tends to get when dismissed politely by a computer. "I guess they don't really make greeting cards for that sort of thing, do they?"

Maria searched and processed the results. "No."

"Yeah. Probably a bit too specific."

"Ready?" a voice asked.

Nathan turned to his left and found an equally petite woman waiting with a small brown bag in one hand, a cheap bouquet of daisies in the other, and, coincidentally, a similar bob and smock. But while she didn't have a name tag to remind him of her name, he was more or less sure that this woman was also his wife. "What's in the bag?"

"Flower for us, flowers for your sister," she said, looking past Nathan to Maria. "Cute dress."

"Thank you," Maria replied, smiling in that way only a Type-II can.

"So, you ready?"

Nathan sighed, then settled on a card that read: SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS. "Yeah. Let's go."

iii From A.I. Miss You: A Brother’s Final Words, by Nathan da Costa (Self-Published: 2078), pg. 37:

Darla and I were never close. I didn't even know she was married until Rosie called to tell me Darla and her wife were expecting their first child. And it wasn't that we didn't get along, or there was some bad blood between us--don't get me wrong. We were just always different souls, I guess. Darla was the quiet one, always reading, always focused on her schoolwork. But, me? Our mom was fond of telling people that I was "preoccupied being someone else's problem." And okay, fair enough. I don't think I've ever been shy about my predisposition to openly communicate my feelings at even the worst possible times. And it only got worse after Dad died, because of course it did. But thinking back on it now, I think Mom found my shoplifting and fights at school a Hell of a lot easier to deal with than her having to explain to a teacher why her ten-year old daughter was convinced she could take a hamster apart and put it back together.

iv For the sake of skipping past all the boring bits about a long, winding drive through the sort of gorgeous stretch of lush Californian California that would bring Steinbeck to frothy bliss (if he weren't inconsiderately stone-cold dead, of course) and lukewarm introspective spousal melodrama, we will. Those who might care about such careless dismissal of assingly trivial things like atmosphere and character development can rest assured that it wouldn't have been any good even if we had bothered with such things. And for those who might not give a shit either way, please know that you were, in fact, missing out on quite a lovely bit of writing. But we're beyond such things now, aren't we? No sense crying about it. Besides, we're doing it for you, you know. We wanted to do it, really. But we thought it best for all of us if we simply got to the damn point before we're all dead like Nathan's sister's family after that awful fire we casually expositioned about sometime back. You're welcome.

Anyway. Let's just say we've arrived at that point where Nathan and his wife stood waiting at the front door of Darla's eyesore of a luxury three-and-a-half story cottage nestled there at the ass-end of a dreamy, tree-laden hillside road. All by its lonesome, without a neighbor within screaming distance. Its not entirely not-ominous charcoal-black wood exterior contrasting with the absolutely batshit amount of scientific doodads, thingamabobs, and watchakerjiggers strung, jutting, bubbling, blinking, crawling, and threaded all about the place. And yet, beautifully complimented the way the setting sun set the silent, birdless sky ablaze so that it looked, more or less, exactly the way a house fire might burn. The fire, Nathan thought to himself as he stood there like some kind of jackass. Ah, yes - the fire. Very hot, fire. Burns things. Burning, hot fire.

Anyway. As we said, no time to waste. Nathan and Vulvian, front door, waiting.

(Also, that's his wife's name - Vulvian. We thought you might like to know that. You're welcome.)

"Jesus," Vulvian blasphemed. "I'm surprised this place didn't burn down sooner."

"It did," Nathan corrected.

"Oh, that's right."

"I'm more surprised she had them build it back the exact same way as before - even all the cables are in the same--"

You know what? Rosie just opens the door. Right now. Okay? I'm in a mood now. This is how it goes. Rosie's opened the door now. Rosie, alive and well. Well, not well. Or alive. She's a robot, of course. It might not even be Rosie, just a similar high-tech gyndroid that just almost reaches the other end of the seemingly inescapable uncanny valley, and picked up for a steal from the local discount store. Hm? Ever think of that? Of course not. That's stupid. Don't be stupid. That's a stupid, stupid idea. Ever come across a little phrase that sounds, reads, and smells precisely like, "A hat on a hat," maybe? It's just Rosie. Re-existing, somehow. Just go with it, okay? It can't possibly be for much longer. Otherwise, why all this nonsensical drivel? Hm? For fun? Well, I'll have you know, I'm not having any. Not one teensy-weensy bit.

So, again. Rosie, one side of the front door - the inside part, that is. And Nathan and his poorly named wife, the other, outside part of the same front door.

"Rosie?" Nathan asked like some understandably confused, shocked, and horrified person who has just seen a... well, not ghost - but some robot-equivalent of a ghost, I suppose.

"Mr. Nathan?" Rosie asked in the same faux, vaguely Latin-ish accent Nathan remembered having to talk to Darla about on more than one occasion.

"Rosie?" he asked again for no good reason, really.

Vulvian, meanwhile, pushed her way beyond this ill-conceived scene, and Nathan eventually followed.

Somewhere beyond the refabricated foyer, through the duplicated den and to the right of the replicated washroom, they eventually found Darla dining with her deceased - yet, also somehow not - family.

(See? Wasn't it worth skipping ahead?)

"What the shit is this?" Nathan asked, staring at his not-quite dead, not remotely close to alive niece and nephew on either side of his very much alive, clearly not well sister. His sister-in-law, Jennda, looked mostly the same, all things considered. And somehow this only made Nathan more uncomfortable. Imagine that.

"Dinner," Vulvian replied.

"Dinner," Darla chewed in agreement. Her family, meanwhile, only poorly pantomimed eating. Not that they seemed to notice or care, what with the way they blindly stabbed themselves about the face and mouth with their forks, splattering cheap Chinese takeout everywhere without a second thought.

"Dinner?" Nathan repeated, only in the sense that it was a question.

"Dinner," everyone replied.

"You all realize how creepy that sounded just now, right?"

"Would you like some dinner?" Rosie asked, startling the weak, little man.

"Oh, thank god!" Nathan creamed. "We've been driving for hours! So much driving and talking and developing, but not at all enough eating."

"Nathan," Vulvian growled, unnecessarily and unconvincingly through what she thought was a smile.

"Fine," he pouted. "Darla, we need to talk."

"Can't it wait?"

Nathan considered this, then looked to Vulvian. Vulvian shook her head, No. Nathan sighed, "No, I guess it can't."

Darla ate for several more moments, then agreed. "Alright."

"Really?"

"Yeah, of course." Then, turning to a small box on the wall, "Pause program."

A cute little chirping sound later, everything went still - the candles, the lights, Rosie, Darla’s wife whose name I’ve already forgotten, the children with such silly names even I can’t be assed to remember. All of it. And at some point, Vulvian was almost certain that even the air had gone still.

"That was easy," Nathan said to Vulvian.

"How so?"

"Well, I just figured--"

"What? That there'd be some drawn out bickering before I inevitably concede to speak with you about me inviting you to my rebuilt house to see my rebuilt family?"

"Well, if you're going to take all the fun out of it..."

"I am."

"Well, wherever you're going, can I join?" Vulvian asked. "Your frozen animatronic family is creeping me out."

(Casio and RCA! That’s their names - the creepy robot kids. Even when they weren’t unalive monstrosities of yet-to-be-explained origins. I knew I had that scribbled down somewhere.)

Darla laughed. "Oh, my god. They're totally creepy, right?"

To be continued...

*****

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