continued from @epiphonoi ------ here
Was it morally repugnant of them, Loki wonders, that they did not feel anger, outrage, upon waking up to learn that Thanos had completed his quest, had erased half of the universe as he had intended? To speak plainly, it was not as if, like most of the universe, Loki had lost lives dear to them in the incident, as they had had the fortune of experiencing any deaths that may have caused them distress beforehand. No, it was as if the dolourous cloud of hopelessness and grief that seemed to have settled over Midgard in the wake of the, ah, dust settling was infectious, and Loki was having to breathe it in as well, with every slow inhale.
Loki stares out at the profile of Adrian Veidt from their makeshift sickbed, at the human who had plucked them from the wreckage of one of his own buildings and cared for them while their stubbornly tenuous skin and bone knit itself together, and wonders at what the Avengers might be feeling right now. Veidt was apparently a retired vigilante, and had not even been involved in the physical fight against Thanos ------ and even he had that faraway, dulled look in his eyes, the sort common to those who had come back from terrible wars. Likely the Avengers were sitting in their compound, feeling the bone-crushing weight of the knowledge of their failure, letting it settle, letting it cloy.
It was a feeling Loki was intimately acquainted with, of course. Perhaps the Avengers too would learn that the pain dulled itself with every repeated blow, that it helped to simply stop expecting success from yourself.
Thanos is dead, apparently, and the stones ‘no longer a threat’. Likely destroyed. There really is no going back, fixing it. Loki wonders how well the Avengers are taking that, as well.
Loki is silent, for a minute, after Adrian has spoken. They have not been conscious for very long, have not had the chance to think of what to do with their future, in a universe that was free of Thanos but half-dead and shell-shocked. There are more immediate things that can be done, though ------ there is nothing about the sight of Veidt so listless and dull-eyed, as if he has lost the one thing remaining to him, that pleases Loki. They had been there, once. For Loki it had been their sense of self. For Veidt it had evidently been hope. The future. Loki would certainly have told him how foolish it was to make such a thing one's sole motivation, had they known him --- before all this.
They are not entirely sure what they are doing, but finds themself doing it anyway --- and although it is two feet that touch the floor upon getting up from the sofa, soon it is four that start padding silently toward Veidt, and a small black cat nudges with its head at the mortal's leg, looks up at him with too-intelligent eyes.