"What?"
Loki looked at her, the mockery on his face growing ever more pronounced.
"Can't bring yourself to do it?"
"Or is this all the cheap conviction your so-called justice amounts to?"
He took another step forward.
Viper's weapon lightly touched the fabric over his chest.
All it would take was the slightest bit more pressure from her finger.
And he would be pierced through in an instant.
Time seemed to stretch infinitely.
Finally.
"...Sigh."
A helpless, unwilling sigh slowly rang out across the rooftop.
Viper slowly lowered her weapon.
She knew.
She had lost.
She could not kill someone who wholeheartedly wished to die.
"You win." Her voice was bitter. "Go."
"We accept our fate."
With that, she turned around, seemingly preparing to leave this place that filled her with despair.
However, at that moment.
Loki suddenly spoke.
"Why?" His voice was confused.
"Why didn't you do it?"
"Why didn't you kill me?"
"I destroyed your world. I got your comrades killed. I put you in even greater danger than before."
"You clearly had every reason to..."
"Because." Viper interrupted him without looking back.
Her voice was soft, yet clear.
"Before my brother died, he told me to keep living."
"He said that as long as I was alive, there was still hope."
Those words were like a bolt of thunder!
They struck fiercely against Loki's long-numb heart!
He froze.
His pupils suddenly contracted!
He remembered his foolish, hopelessly stubborn brother.
He also remembered the relieved, liberated smile on that man's face as he used his own body to block that curtain of deathly light.
That was right.
He had told him to live.
He had traded his own life for Loki's.
Yet Loki had been standing here, bent on dying.
Then what had his brother's sacrifice been for?