Chapter Text
There has always been a quiet, constant hope, of just knowing someone is destined to be with you for all eternity. Soulmates. It’s what all the hopeless romantics in every corner of the world preach. The one person who will truly understand you. Someone you can trust with anything, any deep dark secret you hold, they’ll accept. Their love for you knows no bounds. Don’t worry, it happens to everyone. It’s just not your time yet.
People say it’s different for everyone. A rare few collapse in a panic attack, some have the most blissful three second high they’ve ever experienced, others say they’ve never wanted to punch someone more. All of them say it's their first eye contact, a sudden bumbling intense feeling that comes from nowhere. Disappearing just as quick, no harm done. It's impossible to miss. They’d all say as if that made any sense. As if it wasn’t the most confusing concept in the world.
Tony denies his belief of soulmates to every interviewer or news reporter he’s ever encountered. “There’s no scientific evidence.” He’d say. “Maybe all those credible sources are actually just a secret hippie group of pathological liars.” That one earned him a laugh. “I think the saying ‘don't believe it till I see it’, or I suppose ‘feel it’ applies here.” He’d tell with a flaunt. “Well for starters, if I collapsed by looking someone in the eye, I would reevaluate my confidence.”
Yet Tony, even after all the interviews, hates unanswerable questions. The idea comes back and forth like a crashing wave rattling against his skull. There must be an explanation. A solid foundation as to why people think they’re connected to someone who they had mere minutes with. A lifetime of research later, and there’s still nothing explainable about it. These people are lying. There is no such thing as fate, or just knowing at a glance who you’re supposed to spend all eternity with. The same arguments go around and around in his brain on a never ending loop de loop.
He’s learned that no matter how much tries to refuse the idea, the superstition of it will always come back. He’s learned to accept that the infuriating hopeful fluttering feeling of dread won’t escape him, it’ll trail behind him like his shadow until he’s in the dirt.
He doesn't just accept the idea more when he meets Pepper. He starts to embrace it, slowly starting to understand what all the preaching romantics were trying to explain to him.
He wished he had that feeling when he first saw her. He wished there was a moment like the ones he had described to him. He’s secretly thought so many times he just missed the first eye contact somehow. That he just forgot it in between the whirlwind of drunken hazes, the never ending business meetings, or during the month long projects he’ll disappear into his lab for.
He should've known that she never would have let him forget something like this, even after their inevitable break up. That even he would never let himself forget something like this.
They have Loki surrendering, he’s on his ass in Germany with his hands up. Wearing a stupid smile that makes Tony grimace.
Tony lifts his helmet. Finishing off his glare he's sending Cap to the side of him, he draws his eyes to the front of him. When he looks at Loki again, it isn’t just a stranger. Not a man that just tried to promote himself as an alien Hitler. Not a villain, not a god of tricks from space. Not even the crazy bag of cats that smashed into SHIELD headquarters, who thieved their precious tesseract away.
He’s a flash of white. A glaring shine of a freshly fallen snow patch, the sun reflecting off it straight into Tony's eyes. It makes him go blind for a few aching, throbbing moments.
A numbing cold rushes through him. The skin on his fingers is flaking off with a new shein of blue. It’s as if the hairs on his arms turned into needles splinting his muscles into place. His body feels heavy, frozen stiff in some places, like every last drop of energy has disappeared leaving him shriveled and frail.
Strangely, even in this frigid cold, he imagines he could lay there and fall asleep peacefully for centuries. Even when he knows that there is an inevitable monster looming in the blizzard booming closer and closer to him.
It’s a whole whiplash of howling wind that rushes past him in seconds. He stumbles, struggles to breathe, the air around him turns into a cold that's impossible to inhale without a stabbing flash of pain in his lungs. It makes him choke, a shuttered gasp leaves him.
No, Not him.
The thought must have shown on his face, because just like that, before he can even get firmer planting of his feet, before his mind can even conceive the implications of the new knowledge, before he can even start to grasp at what the fuck just happened. The god disappears from view in a blink.