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What happened? Your silver tongue turn to lead?
It's an old memory, but the frustration is the same. Loki stares at the guardian, at the cold and sunken eyes under the hood, and he does indeed feel like his tongue turned to lead. He's been trying to make a deal with the red skull for twenty minutes now.
The fear has settled in his stomach like an ice cold stone, and his throat is too tight. He can't keep his hands from fidgeting. Panic. Years ago, Loki promised himself that he would never be this scared again, that he would do whatever it takes to stay alive, that he would never give himself up for anything. Or anyone.
He looks over his shoulder at Anthony.
Anthony is sitting on a rock close by, staring at the cliff. He looks tired and frustrated, and forlorn. Loki swallows hard, and then he leaves the guardian where he is and approaches his lover. He would like to take Anthony's hands. He would like to fall on his knees in front of him and beg him to leave, but he knows Anthony too well. Unlike Loki, Anthony has never been the type to run away from things that ruin him.
"Anthony," Loki says, because he doesn't know what else to say, because the knowledge that he failed threatens to make his voice break. He's supposed to be able to make a deal with everyone. He's supposed to get everything he wants through tricks and deceit. He's not supposed to be this useless.
Anthony glances at him just briefly. There is a haunted look in his eyes, but it calms a little when he meets Loki's gaze. He even smiles, a tiny twitch of his lips that is sadder than anything else Loki has ever seen.
"I know," Anthony says. "I know. It's alright."
He's trying to soothe Loki, to make him feel better about this. It's what Anthony always does, always tries to do, and it makes Loki feel even worse. "No," he says. "It's not."
"But we don't have a choice, do we?" Anthony laughs, brief and joyless. "The others count on us. If one of us doesn't return with the stone, everything will -"
"Everything will stay exactly as it was," Loki cuts him off, and he knows very well that he sounds like he is begging. He is begging.
The years after the snap were happiest of his life. Also the saddest, and the most difficult, and the most terrifying, but he was happy. And he knows that he and Anthony could be happy again, but only if they left this wretched place right this second. Loki wants to return to the safety of their house on Midgard, to their chaotic workshop and the smell of coffee in their kitchen, to their stained bed sheets. He doesn't want to be here, and he doesn't want to die he.
But he will, of course.
"We can't do that," Anthony says. "We can't, Lokes, you know that."
It's the softness in his voice that breaks Loki. He tries not to let it show, tries to keep his face blank, to sort his thoughts. The decision has been made, then, he is going to die here. There will be another fall, only this time Loki won't have let go, this time he will have jumped.
"Anthony," he starts, but again that's all he manages.
Anthony shakes his head, anyway. He lifts a hand and rubs his eyes and gods, Loki wants to say goodbye so badly. Anthony deserves so much more than this, but Loki can't give him anything else, and he knows that Anthony already made the exact same decision Loki made himself. From now on, it's not a question of if one of them will die anymore, but of whether it will be Anthony or Loki.
And Loki is not going to let Anthony die.
He leaves an illusion in his place and fills it with so much energy that he barely has any left to make himself invisible. He can't let the illusion disappear when he jumps; it has to stay where it is even when he is dead, at least for two or three more minutes.
Loki goes to the cliff, and even being this close to the edge makes his head spin. His blood is rushing in his ears, and he stops breathing altogether.
Behind him, Anthony says, "I'll do it."
"No," the illusion replies. "You will not."
Loki closes his eyes. Anthony says his name, and oh, Loki knows exactly what he wants to do. He wants to jump himself, and if Loki let him, Anthony would spend the next few hours explaining to Loki why Anthony should be the one to die. He would fight tooth and nail, he would knock Loki unconscious, he would do everything in his power to keep Loki alive.
In this fight, though, Loki has the upper hand. He is scared to death, but Anthony will live, and not only that - he's going to save the universe.
Loki believes in him, and that is why he jumps.