Tony half crawled, half wormed his way out of the bedroom, his head spinning, face flustered, and not exactly sure where he was aiming, but certain that where ever it was there was bacon involved. Around ninety-eight percent certain anyway.
The carpet of his bedroom was softer than the wood paneling he was clambering over now, but everything was still a little distant and distracted. The carpet burn from last nights fun was still stinging and red, and he was close to regretting that last bottle of wine. Not that he could remember having it per se, but his head definitely felt it.
At least he managed to put his clothes on right this morning.
He reached the source of the frankly erotic smell with aching joints and heavy eyes, and hoisted himself up onto the stool beside the breakfast counter before his eyes, still sleep blurred and heavy found the occupied stove with satisfaction.
"You saint." He drawled, reduced to propping his chin up by his palm, elbow resting on the grey granite surface. The scene before his dewy eyes was exquisite, beauteous, bewitching in every detail. There stood Nat, skimpily dressed and frying the precious, metaphorically gold encrusted bacon, the sound of sizzling fats a symphony to his ears. Her bight, wild hair was sleep ruffled, and her grey pajama top ridden up at the back, exposing that tattoo she'd gotten long ago, for some far off reason she hadn't yet got drunk enough to expose.
On running a particularly sour tongue over his unbrushed teeth, he decided that his mouth tasted funny, but that would soon be fixed. All troubles were meaningless right now. Right now he was happy, and only happy. In a drunken stupor his mind went back to last night, making a dumb smile spread across his lips, and then the plate jammed beneath his nose awoke him.
"Enjoy." Before Tony could even finish the delicacy, which was only a matter of seconds, Natasha was gone with no trace of her ever being there, bar the head dent in the couch were she'd spent the night. He had countless beds yet she slept there. He wondered...
"See you later." Were her only parting words. One he grunted with a vague fondness in response to.
He could only focus of the food.
As he took the last mouthful of the crispy, streaked and smoked strips to his mouth, chewed thoughtfully and swallowed, Loki rather abruptly took her place. Well, she'd never stood behind him, face buried in the crook of his neck, biting playfully, but you get the idea.
"Good morning." Loki whispered into his ear, in a way that doesn't really help Tony wake up.
"G'morning." He replies, swiveling off the stool all too suddenly, jerking Loki away and making his head rush like a rabbit in season. It does however pass, not aided by the hand Loki puts around his waist to help steady him.
"You had fun?"
"Immensely." Tony takes in the view before him. It's not hunger that seats itself in his stomach. "God, I love Russians. But let me give you a tip, if one challenges you to a drinking competition, decline. Politely." Loki smiles, and makes his already off-seated head jolt a little more to the left.
"Noted." There is silence for a moment as Tony's brain wonders back into Hangover mode, only managing to come out of it once he realizes he's tilting a little too far off center.
"Anyway," Tony scratches his head, looking around the room, the feeling that he was missing something niggling at him. "What can I help you with this morning? As much as I'd like to think this is a social visit, I doubt it is."
"It's tonight." Tony sobers, a little that is.
"When?"
"Thirteen past three in the afternoon." Tony detaches from Loki's body, and he's allowed to go.
"Where?"
"Your little base." Tony takes his feet around he couch, slow and steady, fingers on the edge of it guiding him.
"Loki-" His smile has finally faded.
"Don't waste your breath. We've been through this."
"Don't I know?" Tony laughs a short laugh. Smile flickering back on for effect. "Besides, we could do with a bit of redecorating." Tony clears his throat and looks to the ceiling. "Just please, for everyone's sake." He looks back to Loki sternly. "Don't go for the cars. They're nice cars."
"Just this once." Loki promises with a glint in his eye.
"They wont be expecting you."
"That is the point." Loki lowered his head. "I shall see you soon, Stark. Good Luck."
"And you." With a nod of his head, Loki disappears, and Tony feels the rise of the morning regrets up his throat, and makes it to the toilet just in time.
There goes the bacon.
His R8 pulls up on the white gravel. The fake palms are swaying softly in the breeze and it's all a little too tropic and calm for a base such as this - it's impending doom and all. The door slams shut and the shades disappear from his head to his hands then into his pockets. With a click of his keys the bleep of the electronic locks can be heard all over the empty car lot.
What a beautiful day for an explosion, he thinks, taking the salty, summer air into his nostrils.
He and his grey striped suit swan into the base - security checks fine and Andy the coffee guy handing him his morning fix.
When he enters the common room, slight smile on his lips, he's greeted briefly by Steve, and on clocking onto him, Clint breaks out into a grin.
"Tony!" He starts, face still prickled with stubble. Why that man chose to work, eat and sleep in this place confused him, but didn't cost him any sleep at night. "Didn't think you'd make it today, not with Nat's retelling of events." Tony huffed. Of course they'd already chatted. God those two needed to get it out of their systems.
"She exaggerates." Tony defended, gesturing with his arms. His butt when on the black leather couch located centrally in the room, his leather clad feet went over the edge, brushing into the green plastic leaves of the plastic potted plant.
"She beats your ass at poker." Fury's snide remark made his head turn, his hand's nearly spilt the coffee. When did he get in the room? That man needed a bell.
He looked a tamely feral as always. It was a comfort to know that all of this constant battle stuff wasn't affecting that. God, it was affecting everything else.
"Don't you get involved with this!" He pointed a finger, and as Fury clicked in the general direction of his feet, unhappy with their location and the possibility of them scuffing the new stuff, they lowered to the floor, reluctantly.
"Anyway, suit up." Fury poured his own cup of brown ambrosia, taking it to his mouth, blowing away some of the steam, and sipping.
"Why?"
"Anonymous tip." Tony smiles into the hand he brought to wipe his lip.
"From who?"
"Anonymous tip."
"Oh come on, when has 'anonymous' ever meant anything to you guys?"
"We're only one third of a spy agency, Stark."
"Still." Given that that tip was anonymously given by him, he's pretty glad the other two thirds are taken up most of their time at present.
So Tony walks through he dramatically dark halls to his little home-away-from-home that he know won't last long - nothing lasts long round here.
But Bruce, whose looking particularly Bruce-y today with his glasses, ruffled hair and button-up purple shirt, meets him halfway, on his way to the control room Tony's just left.
"Hey, Tony." So Bruce approached him, and Tony smiled back, Bruce's fingers picking at each other, eyes open wide in that precious, 'kicked puppy way' he does so well. Bruce was the one Tony most wanted to warn each time Loki played his little games, what with him most affected by the stress that kinda thing causes. But if he gave any hint, who knows what might unravel from that?
"Bruce." He answers, brightly. "How's the detox going?"
"The de-" Bruce shakes his head with a smile, facing his feet. "I was wondering if you could put in some hours at the lab with me tomorrow. There's this one string of code I can't get and its-"
"Tomorrow night?"
"If that's a problem...?"
"No..." But yes. "It's just, you know, me and Nat had a thing..." And after that he has a thing with the dude that's about to blow this place sky high...
"No, no, I understand. Things have been rough, I get it. Tonight?"
"Tonight it is." Or not...
The thing is, ever since his split with Pepper, which he will not go into length on, Nat had agreed to a bi-nightly drunk fest. Just until things cleared out.
Then, one night, after some horrendous bar crawl and eight bottles of Jager, Loki had shown up in his room. And, as you may guess, things had just gone a little south and stayed that way.
That was two months ago, and he still had neither the balls to cough up to it, or the lack of them to stop it.
So every week, once Nat was definitely asleep and Tony was drunk enough, Loki would arrive and just for one night death and destruction was forgotten. All was nice, if slightly unhealthy.
So he made his way to his den of chaotic order and grabbed the helmet from the table where it lay separate from the rest. Stepping into the boots and feeling the warm metal wrap around his every limb, he muttered a brief:
"Here we go again."
And before he has time to even have that whiskey he needs to clear his clammy conscience Loki turns up half a minute early, and uproots one of the trees outside: a completely useless gesture, but one that Loki apparently feels like doing.
Almost as if he were ringing a door bell.
So Tony runs upstairs and along corridors, and with the hastening clanging he can hear happening above him now not all the panic on his hidden face is there for effect.
He exits to the outside world, and the sun seems a little too bright. The glare of the rays almost hides the black and green death machine in the corner. Already SHIELD agents are surrounding it, and a prick of panic for both parties settles in his stomach.
And the window smashes as the door flies up and away, swerving unnaturally from the black BMW's, as per Loki's promise.
Tony needs to get to high ground, he can't do anything from down here.
Then there's another explosion, and this time it catches a few agents. Unnamed but not unimportant.
So he flies up, and fires one, two, three shots at Loki's feet, who dodges them like he's dancing.
Tony misses intentionally, but like always, has the wounding shot locked and loaded and ready to use if Loki ever does get too into it.
But instead of turning on his as Tony's fire gets closer and closer, he turns to one very red-headed, black suited female, whom he seems to have something personal with.
Tony frowns.
And for a while it's okay. With the rest of the Avengers, sans hulk, firing at Loki's back, Widow can handle it herself. minutes tick by like seconds and everything seems okay. Well, as okay as it possibly can be. But then Loki starts pushing her back, surrounding her, and she starts to slip.
This is extreme. As he watches, unable to fire secure in the knowledge he won't hit Widow, it's getting harder and harder for Tony to 'miss' Loki with every shot. His muscles getting tighter and tighter, instinct pushing him more and more to press it...
And then as Loki's third shot nearly takes Nat to the ground, it's immediate.
He sends the warning shot Loki's way, and in expertly dodging it, although it came close, Loki did not look at the offender and sent a return blast Tony's way. It pounded him unaware in the chest, sending him, still wrapped in the suit, into and through the concrete walls of the standing side of the complex.
With a tumble of limbs and the sparking and crackling of broken circuits and broken skin, it's not long before he comes to rest, lying in a pile of grey and dusty rubble. The lights over his head start flickering as his eyes can finally re-open.
And for some moments, he simply lays on the unsettled floor, a little shocked, but mostly okay. But damn that hurts. He pulls up his face plate, just because it's starting to feel a little like there's no air in there.
He sits up, spluttering out the dust that coats his lungs, and wiping away the glass off his scratched metal shoulders. Then the dizziness fades, and he's swiftly and cruelly reminded about the battle going on outside. By the increasing noise and the varying shades of orange decor, he assumed SHIELD weren't winning this one.
He stood, just, and stumbled forward before having to hold himself up against the edges of the hole he had created on entry, and simultaneously decided that he probably needed a few more moments.
He closed his eyes and breathed out, fingers tightening on the broken brick; pulse slowing.
Then with one sudden spout of confusion, he fell from out the window into the air, for a second stopping, but the floor that flew up to meet him wasn't as welcoming as it could've been.
In the midst of a battle he wouldn't exactly call challenging, and halfway to defeating the infantile spider beneath his boot, Loki stopped and stiffened. The faint thump far away enough to grab his attention. He turned his head and saw the splodge of red and gold splayed out on the ground of the parking lot. He lowered the arm he had raised in attack, and let the anger slip from his eyes.
It's safe to say, from that point on, the Avengers started winning.
Throwing away one more futile arrow shot by the hawk that so tested his nerves, he replaced himself with a carbon copy, and moved to the Man of Iron's side. His breath doesn't hitch nor his eyes halter, even for a second.
He crouches down next to it, and placing a concerned fingertip on the Arc Reactor, the usually lively blue light faltering dangerously, took a moment to plot before taking them somewhere a few less explosions could interrupt them.
He laid Stark down on his bed, and silenced Jarvis in an angered flick of his hand and a harsh grunt of annoyance. He frowned at the outburst, deciding he must reel it back. Clear heads are a must. A must. He stripped off the suit with less care than the maker would appreciate. ripped-up circuits and dented metal could be fixed under any hammer- not quite the same case for a human.
He stripped off clothing, and bought a rag to clean the sweat from the man's fevered forehead.
There was blood, and a lot of it too. The head had been hit, evidently hard, and the blood seeping from that specific wound was staining his face a brutal crimson, running down, and tracing the lines of his face with uneven, and scarlet lines.
The red spread to the cream sheets of the bed and dispersed in random patterns.
The spine – bruised and battered but not broken. A shrapnel shard of his suit that had splintered, minutely, had run under the skin of his back and simply displaced it. Displaced but not broken. Loki studied it all for second, pushing away the urge to kick something, mainly himself.
His shot, his fire was the cause for the man's main worry. The fall did the rest. The somewhat crater shaped dent in his upper abdomen. A wound that had torn it's way through the hard metals of his egotistical persona and shattered his lower rib cages. The metal side of the Arc Reactor, still failing, almost visible, and burnt. He had displaced that as well. He had truly broken him.
But in the end he could do nothing, being anything but a healer. Midgardian science would have to repair this wound, under his watch of course. They could be trusted, if with hard enough motivations. But if he was going to watch, and then somehow apologize to Tony when, and even if, he wakes up, then he had to be there, did he not? Being invisible had its perks, and was without a doubt fun, but Tony had other companions who would take his place, and ruin his peace. That wasn't nearly as enjoyable. He wanted to better Tony, not kill all his acquaintances before he wakes.
Of course it was an accident, an instinctual volley, but whether Stark and his little friends would quite concur, that was another matter entirely.
So he scoops him up, now cautious of the fragile bone stretching along the entirety of his torso, and takes to the doors of the nearest hospital. Not SHIELD's hospital, but the local. One where they didn't have guns and locked doors.
The stench hits him. The stench of human death and disease and disinfectant. The time-yellowed walls and the floors still stained with sick if inspected closely made him re-think this decision. Filth was all he saw. Not near fitting for one as Tony. But looking down into the mass of blood-matted hair, he decided it was very truly a case of needs must.
So for a moment as he stands there it's quiet, but then one patient see's him, screams, and then suddenly it's a chorus of idiots. His fist clenches as it holds his man up, face tightening.
"I assume you have doctors." He states, and the adoring fans silence themselves. It's only then that they seem to notice the casualty in his arms, and the cream sullied bed sheet the only thing between his dignity and the stale, acidic air.
A nurse wanders dumbly through a door, and gasps a little, but with a few pointed words from Loki, she leads them, shakily, to a bed. Other doctors appear, unsure and uncertain and seeming to Loki, rather less than qualified. One of the braver few asks him politely to leave, stating it could affect the patients recovery. He replied, just as politely.
"There is no recovery yet, and I will stay until there is. You will do your job, or otherwise you are unneeded. Now I am in a bad mood." He smiled. "It would be ill-advised to make this worse."
He did however stay back as the ward was emptied and their favorite 'celebrity' was dressed in something he assumed medical. He scoffed at its primitiveness. For a fraction of a second he thought about taking the wounded to Asgard. He would be healed in a matter of hours. He laughed, disturbing the doctors for only a second.
He doubted that move would get them anything other than chains and a nice, cozy prison cell.
They hooked him up to wires and machines galore. They patched him up with bandages and braces and band aids, and every fifteen minutes, they'd come to take more blood.
It was around the fifteen minutes mark, when upon the dissipation of Loki's illusions and the realization of a missing member of the team, that the Avengers had traced down and arrived at the bed in which Tony lay motionless. They entered all worried and wounded and pissed off. They hadn't seen Loki yet, sitting in the corner, in the conspicuous disguise of a doctor, checking his notes. He watched with a hidden smile as they fumbled, and argued with some nurses and with even more doctors, and chuckled softly as Bruce decided to inspect the man himself.
They were all worn themselves, and sat in the empty ward being attended themselves briefly.
It was only when some blond male in a blue overall told them who had bought Stark in that all the Avengers froze, and the only time when Loki's chuckles were heard. They turned to him, the 'doctor patiently waiting and watching the patient,' and clicked almost immediately. Thinking any further use of the guise of another futile, he switched back, and watched the reactions with a distinct and great glee.
It took mere moments for guns and arrows and fists to be pointed at his head. He raised his hands and his eyebrows, rising also from the chair with as little intimidation as he could muster.
"Now, now," He cooed, looking only at Natasha, focusing his green, glistening eyes into hers. "It's not nice to shoot in public."
He was surprised he'd got this far without at least one bullet hole.
"You-"
"Please limit the cursing." He added, dropping his hands, instead clasping them behind his back, thrusting out his shoulders. "I fear I have something to tell you." The mortals gripped their weapons harder, shuffling suspiciously. "You may find it hard to believe." He continued, kicking the ball of his booted foot along the clean, spotted linoleum with an air of secretly feigned confidence and bravado that annoyed the hell out of everyone. "I am not here to kill anyone." The tension that had built on each their individual faces unhooked, switching back into something closer to irritated. "Rather to watch."
"God, he's gone soft." Scoffed Barton, whom Loki scowled at. He was the least worried by that statement of the group.
"Why would you watch him?" Asked Bruce, still by Tony's side, hands lingering where he had put them to take a pulse, the only one not ready to attack him.
"I don't believe you need to know."
"Cut it out – What is it you want?" Loki glanced at the red and bruising scrape on Nat's cheekbone, running his tongue over his drying lips. He remembered putting it there.
"To destroy each and every one of you – without mercy and without pardon. But not today."
"Why-" Natasha was most rudely interrupted by the bleeping of Tony's machines. The doctors the team reluctantly allowed in swarmed to find the problem.
Bruce's eyes found Loki's from where he had been moved into another corner, far from the hassle and far from anything that could make his heart beat faster. His eyes found Loki's and did not let go.
What Bruce saw Loki would refuse to admit. That hint of regret and hidden sprig of anger. Anger towards himself.
"Tell me," Loki spoke, the nurses all busying themselves deeper into their work, feeling braver now they were surrounded by superheroes. Loki eyes left Bruce's. "Can any of you tell me why I am not restrained right now?"
"Because Tony's hurt," Steve started. "and we want to see what you're planning. You don't want him dead, yet you attack him, brutally. Tell me that's not meant to spark our interest." And of course you can't constrain me, not if that means risking the civilians.
"I never meant to hurt him. It was accidental." Steve didn't budge in the slightest.
"Come off it."
"No, I mean it. I would never intentionally wound him. He was just protecting our dear black widow. I got too close for his comfort. I wasn't looking. I must apologise, I really must." Even the doctors spared him a glance in confusion. "If he were awake, he'd probably hit me, I mean I deserve it of course. I'll pay, in some subtle way later. When you my dear have gone home and he's drunk enough to strip his inhibitions."
"What are you implying?" Asks Steve, arms not once unfolded from when he had arrived. Barton opens his filthy mouth to presumably spill some filthy words, but being far from in the mood, Loki intercedes.
"Oh, I'm just a liar. Ignore me. But do believe me when I say that this was unintentional." Nat looks at him, upset and taking this personally, as is understandable, and she snaps, in that way that looks so cool to an outsider.
"Oh – I can't take it, someone get a van or something."
"I don't want-" Loki tried to reason, suddenly being outnumbered by glares somewhat less than friendly.
"If you are a good guy, you won't fight back, will you?" Loki's smirk disappears.
"I am trying to be the good guy. I am not the good guy. There is a distinct difference, please try to learn it." And just then the machines explode. Even Loki flinches at the sudden blaring and wailing of the heart monitor. The reactor is failing, a piece of shrapnel has gotten through and is tearing at the muscles. The heart is pumping furiously, Tony's eyes race under the lids, and the fingers twitch unconsciously. Medical men play with him, prep him for surgery and hurry him to a place to drive scalpels into the skin and draw out the damage. Stone age technology to Loki, but evidently the only available option.
It's at that point when all the emotion he's been pushing down with such great force cascades to the surface, and only alerting Bruce with his unusually sharp exhale of breath, he disappeared from the hospital room, and found himself on a roof, holding great certainty that this was Stark Tower.
What's the point of him warning the man if he doesn't take heed! Loki internalizes his anger in a pumping of his nerves. The fool.
The wind riles itself up, whistling in his ears, whipping his hair in all directions, slapping the black strands into his face. He lets out a cry, a short one, a chaste one, and as he does so, turns in agitated frustration and walks briskly into the building.
The computers that register and then delete any record of his presence are used to his coming and going. Tony's favorite 'Jarvis' is speaking to him, informing his that Tony is out, as if he doesn't know. Although his Stark may never forgive him, in one great fit of something he hasn't felt in a while, he rips the software connecting the AI to this room from the wall, and with a fizzle and crackle, the voice that mocks him so is gone. He storms to the drinks cabinet, lips thin and brows furrowed and takes the half empty Whiskey from it's stead. He drinks.
He never liked the taste of this 'golden drink of dreams' as Tony describes it, but it does dull the senses a little.
It hits him how pathetic he's become. The once rightful king of Asgard, trickster and god, now upset by the wounding of some petty plaything.
The carved and delicate crystal meets the wall. The pale glass shattering and spraying out, mixing with the liquors pale yellow, glinting with such a painful beauty as it dispersed, almost slowed in time. He steadies himself on the counter, mouth seething and spewing words not of this Earthen tongue. Taking one cooling breath, he straightens, adjusts his hair back from the wind ruffled mess into something half decent, and then decides that he really must get his bearings.
He paced the room, just to feel his feet moving. Just to hear the clip and clop of his boots of the floor. He waited and waited, and worried not when the scarlet sun set around him.
Sometimes he was glad he was separated from his kin and his would-be family. For if they could see him now, what would they think? What would they see?
The floor was almost worn before he stopped, a smile graced upon his lips.
"God damn it, Tony." Hissed Fury down the telephone line upon hearing the fate of his least favorite Hero. "Get him outta that damn place and get him over here." The voice of the receptionists at the local ER replied sheepishly and sharpish.
"Will do, sir." He clicked the call off and rubbed his temples.
He dialed Clint's number, wanting some actual answers, not relays through under qualified nurses.
"Report." He simply said, and with a grunt less than tactfully hidden, Barton answered.
"Tony took a hit, bad one. Dropped out of the sky like a brick. The suit splintered when the fire hit, stuck in him like spikes."
"Spare me the dramatization."
"Sorry." Clint cleared his throat. "Apparently, and to the best we know, Loki bought him here – the hospital. Not sure why, but he's disappeared now. I don't like it."
"If you did I'd shoot your ass. Now, make sure he's air lifted here. That maniac didn't touch the underground sections. Medical's still intact, if a little singed."
"He is in surgery."
"What?"
"Something went wrong- shrapnel. What with the coma it's a bit of a mess this end."
"Well get those clowns off him and get someone from SHIELD in there. If someone private screws up his parts then insurance will have a field day. We screw it up, it's fine." Fury sighed in exhaustion. Three consecutive months of battle after battle, relocation after relocation. If he had any hair to begin with, he would've lost it all by now. "Backups on the way."
"Thank You. On it."
Hawkeye cut off the signal with a click of his finger onto his ear piece.
"What'd he want?" Asked Steve, the only one other than himself still in the ward and not outside the theater like it'll spur Tony on or something.
"We need to get a transfer. High and mighty doesn't want him here."
"Fair enough. Civilians shouldn't have to deal with the possibility of Loki's return."
"That too, although he was mainly thinking about the high mortality rate and the general lack of technological understanding 'civilians' have." Steve nodded. He was still dressed in that overly camp 'uniform', and was covered in bloodied grazes and smoked, blackened patches. Clint was too, but he hadn't yet looked in a mirror.
Long story short, Tony's operation was taken over by newly arrived SHIELD medics and all was well and tediously long. For the recovery stage, Tony was lying comfortably in the top-class beds deep in the heart of an underground complex, reactor-less, shrapnel-less and for the moment, conscious-less. The operation was somewhat rushed and un-prepared for, and only god knows how the patient might react waking up to the news. Everyone from fury to the strawberry seller back in Malibu knew how irrationally attached to that thing Tony was.
It was however only three days until Loki figuratively came knocking at the door. No one knows how, and couldn't fully understand why Loki had broken his way into the lower levels, and how none of the staff had notice a certain runaway Odinson standing in the corner where he was straight and smiling. Because Loki didn't want them too, they reasoned.
When they finally did, quite a few lights and alarms were set off. Guns clicked and soldiers palms got sticky. He holds his hands up in defence, a little less sarcastically than the first time.
"Hold your fire." Fury booms, the first on the scene. "You little- How'd you get in here?"
"I-"
"Scrap that, just remembered I don't care. Tell me why, then get your ass out of here before I shoot it off."
"I came for many reasons." Loki answered, Fury holding up a hand to tell him that the step forward he just took was enough. "But mainly, and the one you want, is that I came to apologize."
"Apologize?"
"Apologize." Fury takes a moment just to stare into Loki's face.
"Apologize?"
"I hurt him. I see now how much." Loki looked to the wounds. Saw beneath the wrapping to the vicious scar that Stark might never find time to forgive him for. Fury's brow furrows behind him.
"What game are you playing?"
"So many I've lost track, but I assure you this isn't one. As I told your dancing monkeys before. This was an accident, and a slip of my hand. I am thinking of a way to right it, but for now I need to stay here."
"Well then we have a problem, don't we."
"You don't believe me?"
"Well of course not. Do you think me some little child with a wooden sword, tugging at your sleeve with glistening eyes?"
"Not in that many words. Do not get me wrong. I never asked your permission to stay. I am staying. I just thought you'd want to know."
"Why?"
"Oh, if I told you that, Tony would skin me not with a blade, but a blunt and rusted one. I wish for no such fate." Only then did Loki remember the horde of shaking barrels pointed his way. He laughed at them. "Do you believe that I want to help?"
"No."
"Well then how can I prove it to you?"
"You can't. Get out of my house."
"How can I prove it to you?" Fury crossed his arms, looking a little harder at the crease in Loki's brow, reading a little closer into the story behind the crudely straightened hair and clenched fists.
"You're a game player. You're our enemy. You're insane." Fury bent his head back a little, taking note of the raised eyebrows of his men. "You can stay." Loki smiled at the permission, but other than that remained reminiscent. "God knows what I'm doing." And with that, Fury tuned on his heels, motioning his men to follow.
They did.
They can't capture me, he mused, so they entertain me, how interesting.
The door slammed with Loki and Tony the only two the other side, and Clint, who had just skidded across the floor and come to a halt only meters away with an expression on his face close to hardness, questioned it.
"I wanna see what he does." Answered Fury, looking back to the duo. Loki sat in the chair beside the bed, looking down to the hands he had clasped in his lap.
"Bit risky, don't you think?"
"Seems to feel guilty. Already nearly killed him - If he actually wanted the man dead he would be.
At that point, the rest of the Avengers showed up, late and just as confused as everyone else in the room. Fury only answered their questions with a 'trust me.'
They didn't.
Nat and Clint were off hours, sitting together crossed legged against the grey walls outside the glass doors of the medical bay, watching Loki silently. He never looked at them, but they never took their eyes off him.
"What do you think he's doing?" Asked Nat, picking at the gun she'd just cleaned in her hands.
"I don't want to know." They'd shut off any entry into and out of this area, and for the first time in this three month long conflict, they'd considered calling Thor in for a little advice. He was busy being king of Asgard, so in the end they decided to wait it out. Loki looked as harmless as he was ever going to look. But even still, the only thin membrane between every single SHIELD agent in that building storming into that room with sharpened nails and bared teeth was that one order that they didn't want to obey.
Four months ago everyone had been working separate cases, some in this country, some in another. Yet the only thing that had brought them back together was standing in a room beside their critically injured teammate, and friend, and was pushing the team further apart than ever.
Fury was behind a screen, watching Mr. Comatose and Mr. Crazy from a safe distance, finger twitching next to the big red button.
Fury didn't like this. But if he'd learnt one thing from sparring with that God of goddamn Mischief, he learnt that if he wanted to be in the base, no bullets, harsh words or not-so-gentle shoves are going to get him out. All he could do was sit, watch and wait. It was agony.
It was Tony in there. Tony who Loki had suddenly decided to get attached too. That worried him beyond belief. He'd be damned if he would ever believe a filthy word out of that aliens mouth but there was some truth to it.
Loki was a liar, and no matter how good he was, a lie can always be seen to be a lie if you know what to look for. Fury did. Loki wasn't wholly lying, that damned little devil.
Of course there was the other thing that could come of this situation. If Loki was genuine - and that was a sentence he didn't even consider he'd think - then it would be easy enough to simply slip a pair of handcuffs on and stick him in a dungeon somewhere, no? Unfortunately, it would.
Fury stood a little too quickly. The chair squeaked along the floor behind him, and three agents, startled, looked up.
"I'm getting coffee." He announced, leaving the room.
Loki sat in the chair, mind racing so fast he almost couldn't keep up. The patch of skin he had been picking at for countless hours now was just starting to get red, and the strain in his muscles from sitting still too long was growing.
He could feel the eyes of his enemy on him, and as much as they itched, burnt, and scarred him, he would do nothing. He could. Oh, he easily could. But he wouldn't. Would that be some repentance?
He hissed under his breath, knee jerking at the pathetic nature of his mind, and the first notable movement in hours. He had startled his watchers. He stood, and he could feel the air tighten around him with the anxieties of the mortals outside the glass. He turned to face them, and as they stared coldly back, readying their weapons in case they had need of them, which they seemed to think they would.
He twisted his ankle only slightly, feeling the comporting press of his dagger inside the lining of his boot. He was here with permission, they had no grounds to attack.
They soon would, but that was no matter.
For while he had been sitting there, presumably doing naught else but stewing in self-pity, which he was a little but not wholly, he had also been formulating.
He idea had come to him back while pacing in his lovers home, but only now had it perfected itself. He was slow, he knew, but fast enough.
He walked towards Tony, eyes still locked in theirs, and brushed away the bed sheets keeping Stark warm. Only when he needed to see the layers of medical equipment he was removing did he look away. They came banging on the glass like fools, calling in for back up. Red flashed in the room and the doors unlocked.
They ran through the open door, but were stopped by a particularly effective barrier of Loki's own designing. They shot, the bullets too entering the force field and dissipating into dust.
"Be quiet." He hissed. "I have never done, nor even attempted this before, I would appreciate a little space to concentrate."
He was, for once, being truthful. He had never attempted the healing arts of his magic. His mother, being well trained, offered it to him. But in his youth he had never considered needing it. He had learnt the basic first aid: He had learnt to heal paper cuts and leather sores, all knowledge he had now almost forgotten. But all magic was primarily the same. A master in the rest of it, how hard could the other parts be. Even if he didn't want to do this, he had no other viable options. Midgardian medicine was worse than he imagined. It was slow, primeval and frankly tedious.
It was play all or none.
He found the heartbeats of the worried and woeful watchers more annoying than they ought be, but he put that down to a mix of nerves, his general demeanor and stress. Not that he was saying he was nervous - of course not, he couldn't be. It wasn't like one wrong move of a foreign technique within a foreign anatomy could kill the man, was it? Unfortunately it was, but with an unnecessarily large intake of breath, he began.
It starts the same as any other magic. You start killing a man the same as you start healing one. He can't help but in this instance find it ironic. His fingers warm, that familiar stab behind the eyes of effort is all it takes. Instead of what he would usually do, contort the magic into evil deeds, he spins it the other way. It's new and unfamiliar, and he remembers why he never learnt the art fully.
He sure he's doing it wrong - it stings. He's of course not entirely sure where it stings, but it does, virulently. There are pricks of numbness in his warmed fingers, bursts of hammering in his temples, and the water drawn into his drying eyes overflow. It's just a generally unpleasant experience.
He always assumed the light would be golden, like he'd seen the healers do so many times before, but it is not. It's green, exactly the same shade as always.
But when the machines beep in protest, and it's evident that this is hurting more than helping, Loki realizes why.
It is meant to be golden, he just can't do it.
At the wail of machines, it must look like he's meant to be hurting. The banging of fist against glass and fields carries on, and voices are raised and anxious.
The urge to destroy them is gnawing at the side of his mouth.
But Loki knows he is close to figuring this out.
It just takes the most minor of calibrations and-
There, the machine stops bleeping, and for a moment, the watchers are subdued.
Loki is extraordinarily good at magic. None else could have learnt this quickly. At that, Loki smiles at himself.
But then he is reminded of why he must learn this quickly.
The pale gold around his fingers and ghosting over Tony's chest isn't near as vibrant as those healers back in Asgard, but their killing spells aren't near as bright as his, so there they're even.
It still hurts. Healing magics drain. The most invasive of all that he's experienced. He's never like being invaded.
As Loki holds his hands over the fresh scar on Stark's chest, he thinks something is happening. But a time passes that he doesn't think should, and so doubts that there is. But as he pushes it, bullies it to work, the light flickers back to green, and again the machines wail.
He might be extraordinarily good a magic, but at controlling his emotions, he has work to be done.
But as the annoyance grows and grows, delving into anger, Loki has to retract his hand.
He's no physician.
He tries again, stubborn and sick at the stomach. Still, no result. Nothing. Stark remains some vegetable. Limp and useless. It's grotesque.
It's gold still this time, so it should be working. It should. It should. It should.
This is how I heal myself, so it should be working-
What he wouldn't give to be on Asgard. But he can't. I never can-
But that flare of something innately Loki sparks up in his chest, and it doesn't quite register when the newly crying machine tells him he's just cut off Tony's heart.
There's a flat line in the air, and his hand's pulsing green.
He can't snatch it away, not now. He can't stands those eyes staring, not now.
The barrier, once translucent, now mists, and the only one who can see the mess he's making of this attempt is him. Him and all his troubles.
He fumbles, something rare. But nothing works. He blundered in and made the situation worse. So much worse. The machine is silenced in a crackle of electricity. That kind of magic he can do. That kind of magic he's perfected.
Dark magic's love him as much as he loves them. Dark he can do because he is dark. Trying to be some kind of healer was foolish, and he sees that now.
The barrier fades, and everyone of those now glaring at him will pay. He doesn't care about a dead man's opinion.
Damn It!
"Look at what you've done, people!" He cries, old habits lashing back at him like a rubber band on bared flesh. "Look at your hero."
"Why now?" Fury asks. Too angry to do anything else. The soldiers have reloaded their guns, the Widow has dried her eyes, and nobody has tolerance for the murderer any more.
"Oh, I love a good game, me." He croaks a laugh from his drying lungs. "Haven't you guessed?"
"This isn't your style."
"And what is?" Loki stalks forward, heart pumping alien blood through his screeching veins. "What am I, Mr Fury? Please, do enlighten us all."
"You're playing some game, you are. And I bet by the look in your eyes, you lost."
"And how did you come to that conclusion?" Fury signals away the guns that prick at Loki's proximity.
Loki doesn't need magic from this distant. He wouldn't even need to stretch to rip the heart out of this one.
That would make him feel so much better.
"You're crying." Loki doesn't have time to continue before Fury starts again, testing his luck. "You're angry, at who? I'm gonna bet yourself. And you didn't want to kill Tony, oh no. You were trying to save him. Just a guess, but I don't think it worked."
Fury finds it uncomfortable as a hand grips his neck.
Loki doesn't even feel the barrage of bullets ripping into his skin.
An arrow pierces his cheek, one that would've hit his eye had he not have turned. He ripped it from his flesh, and that reminds him.
He spares a moment to observe this director's little groupies fighting away through the ordinary men, trying to reach him, and stop him. He sent them back with a flick of his free wrist. He held them down with a click. There's quite a crowd that has gathered to watch.
His hand is cold as his clenches the air from Fury's lungs. Loki's eyes are just as cold as they bare down, not into Fury's, but into everyone else's. But at the click of larger guns being loaded, ones he can't pass off with natural healing, he has to retreat, and right now, he doesn't want to be anywhere else but here. He reforms the force field, around himself, the flailing fish in his grasp, and Tony. Dead Tony.
He lets them watch this time. He lets them watch as their director turns purple. With not even the energy to reach for his gun anymore, it's an easy kill. Too easy, and not nearly satisfying the creature in his chest. He drops Fury to the floor, reveling in his pants and his gasps for air.
Loki wants nothing more than to scream. To rip at anything and everything until his fingers bleed. He wants to hear other people scream and see them run. He wants people to see what he can do, not what he can't.
But before he can do anything, he catches Tony. Still and peaceful. But not what he should be. Tony was never still, never peaceful. It was hateful. He hates it. He can't look at it. He marches up to the open casket, bracing a hand to strike down. He can't stop the pounding of his heart against the paper of his chest, and if he can't stop Tony being dead, then why should he try?
But he wants to try. Within the race of his blood, hot as it may be, he wants to try again. It was some foolish whim, an idiots grasp at control. But he was foolish. He wasn't an idiot but he was a fool. The fist that had raised to strike, came down as a palm into his chest. The razing flame of his mind had calmed to a simmer, and as clarity returned, he wanted to try.
He did. But this time, as nothing happened, he did nothing. He purged all the emotion as he had done so before.
Loki knew he was prone to extremes, and had learnt to control them.
First my family, then my home, my mother-
Death had been so often. He wanted to control death. He wanted to choose who lived and who died, and when he couldn't? Well, it reminded him.
"You're ridiculous."
"Excuse me?" Loki turns, watching Fury as he struggles on the floor, neck brutally red.
"You can't do it by brute force, you know." Fury coughs away the dryness in his throat. "You gotta be nice with it. It'll come to you."
"And what would you know?"
"About as much as you I'm guessing, so give it a go." I have. I will be laughed at.
"No."
"Out of spite? I want to save him as much as you. Try." He braces himself to scold Fury's boldness, but this ant has intelligence. With his calmness has returned his wits, something he had lacked the past few hours. That was happening more often lately. I'm spending too long with these lesser fools. This new technique might just work. And if it doesn't? Well, there's a whole room to take the pain out on.
Flexing his fingers, he thinks about the words. It'll come to you. It was an odd notion, and different to any method he's heard, but nothing else was working. Be nice with it. You cannot be nice to an inanimate force, but he got the meaning.
The chest felt like the wrong place to put his hand. It felt impersonal, and it was the place where so many failures had happened before.
He cupped Tony's stone cheek in his hand, and found himself gripping a little too tight.
Relax, be nice.
He leans forward and down, getting close enough to smell the stench of human death. It didn't help comfort him.
Can I even heal the dead?
That thought was horrid, but it had been done before, he had heard about it.
The greats could do it, and he could be great.
Fury grew audibly uncomfortable behind him, but he didn't matter. Neither the futile banging on the glass, nor the cries of hatred mattered. Not at the moment.
I have to relax.
But when the light came, he couldn't control it. It didn't come from within him, but from within Tony. It felt wrong, off, foreign, but it seemed to be working. He didn't know what was happening, nothing he could see, but there wasn't an absence of change.
And before the growling audience, Tony gasps into life, blinking and arching into the harsh light above his head. Tony jolts up, crashing into Loki's chest, the shock of life too much for the corpse. There's an eerily still silence that descends upon the room, the only noise the greedy breaths that Tony drew. Loki finds himself clinging like a dumb infant, yet Tony, in his almost consciousness, holds on tighter.
With all the fiddling, Tony needed some down time. Time to really relax, and after his death, he needed to rediscover himself. Take a break, drink more wine.
He headed straight for the science unit.
His fingers itched for machinery that wasn't in anyway attached to him. He longed for the mystery of mechanics, and missed the deep smell of WD-40 and grease. This place was too clean for those smells, but the sight of it was a comfort, at least.
He had to fight to be allowed down here, but no one argued for long. He'd just used the 'hey, I just died' routine, and pretty soon people started caving. They still wouldn't let him leave the base, though. He was working on that one.
People looked at him funny ever since he woke up. Sure, he may have died, but these guys brought him back okay. He figured it was the lack of arc reactor. People had grown so used to it that he must seem odd now without it.
Another part of him feared what had happened while he was out. He always drank a little deeper into the cup when that thought popped up.
He remembered hitting the ground, then he remembered Fury's face in front of his, barking questions at him. Fury hadn't spoken to him since. Thinking about it, he hadn't seen Fury.
He needed more alcohol.
It was half past three in the PM when Bruce discovers him in the lab, disrupting Tony's quiet recollections.
As Bruce wanders happily through the door the other end of the large expanse of science, he can't say he's overly disappointed for the distraction.
The first thing Tony does is raise from the chair he was lounged in, and accept the shake and tight hug offered.
"Thought we'd lost you."
"You mean you gave up on me?"
"You had a crater in your chest and a psychopath for a protector." Bruce regretted saying it as soon as he had finished.
"What?" What the hell happened when I was out?!
"Never mind." Whether or not it was a stop Tony's inquest, or whether it was genuine, Bruce takes him back in for an even tighter hug, and Tony's pretty sure he's going to end up back in hospital for broken ribs. That man doesn't have to be the hulk to be damned strong.
Tony's the one to pull back in the end. He smiles with the idea of work and play.
"So, that thing you needed help with." Tony's smile widens. "You ready?"
Bruce grins with appreciation, but before he can even reply, Natasha is there, presumably having followed Bruce, car keys dangling from one hand, the other positioned on her hips, and her whole body was leaning against the frame of the door.
He'd been unconscious for four days. Another drunken date was due.
Natasha walks towards them, and almost feeling bad, Tony takes a brief moment to look over the work he was supposed to assist with. Natasha had been the only one to visit him when he was still bed bound. The others were all inexplicably busy. Another cause for the bottle guzzling.
"You mind if I steal your date?" She directs at Bruce, who nods a simple agreement. Natasha and Tony lock arms, once Tony's ready to go.
"Sorry about the plans. How's tomorrow?" Bruce shrugs, purposely playing the guilt game. Tony decides not to stoop to Bruce's level, walking him and his 'date' off towards the door.
"Oh, and Tony!" Bruce calls to their backs while Tony does so. "Don't fall out of any more tall buildings!" Tony smirked back down at him.
"Wouldn't dream of it!" Bruce smiled too, and at the closing click of the door, and the absence of either Tony or Romanov, that smile faded, and his work began. He'd figured out the coding two nights before, h just didn't want to make the poor man feel bad.
The glasses chinked, the gasoline held within sloshing.
"Cheers." Tony proclaims, his drink held higher than Nat's. She didn't respond, sat crossed legged the couch, stiff, only ever moving to keep finishing and refilling her load. "Oh come on, you can't stay mad at me forever." Her eyes darted to his defensively.
"I'm not mad-" She inhaled sharply, drawing her eyes away. Testing an already stretched temper – not so smart.
"Then what is it? Sexual frustration, because that I could understand. I. Look. Ravishing."
"I don't like it."
"I didn't expect you would."
"I-" Nat takes the largest gulp that she has all night. Tony's fingers find her knee, and lay there just to ground her. He hates doing this, but he knew it would happen. That's why he told no one in the first place.
They kinda figured it out with the whole 'death bed clingy thing' that had apparently happened.
"I pretty sure he's done with the massacring."
"How can you be sure? It's stupid, Tony. Damn stupid. You can't trust him. What the hell are you thinking?"
"I don't think you want to know." Nat looks away in disgust, but it's the kind that isn't truly meant, and that ends in a grin.
"Are you sure?"
"Am I ever?" "But, look. I'm not asking SHIELD to wear matching bracelets with the guy and accept it, because let's face it, no. I just..." Tony chuckles at himself. "He's nutty, and insane, but I'm pretty sure he's over the worst of it."
"You could be arrested, you know."
"Who can touch me?" Nat spoke from over her glass.
"Fury'll give it a god damned go."
Tony pouted into his own. "And I expected that. I'm ready and waiting for the hate mail, I'm ready."
"You have the morals of a pig."
"But the face of an angel." She fiddles with the empty crystal, and the cogs in her mind turn as she questions refilling. But she swats away Tony's hand and throws her legs over the edge of the couch.
"Right, I'm leaving." She proclaims, frowning. "God knows why I'm letting you do this." She stops standing and looks at him, drunken deadliness in her eyes. "He's coming right after I leave, isn't he?" As Tony nods, she walks a little faster out of the door. Stark follows, catching up then passing, opening the door for his dear lady. "See you later." Were her only parting words. That, and the grace of her lips on his for a second. "I'm glad you're okay."
Tony shuts the door, making a mental note to die more often. But as he turns, the joy on his face only brightens, and for a second, he has to balance his back against the door, the sheer power of heightened elation weakening his knees.
Oh, how pathetically cliche.
"Well, well, well." Tony chants. "And what time do you call this?" The back on Loki's head, which is all Tony can see from over the top of the couch, doesn't move. "Oh, don't be like that, honey. It didn't mean anything, honest. I was thinking of you every second. But with the lack of reply, he bumbles forward, in a suave way he can't really explain. He turns the corner and nearly faints.
Loki, on the sofa is wearing 'civilian clothing'. A plain white shirt with poor straining buttons, and a pair of simple black trousers. He's not looking at Tony, but rather finding the ceiling more interesting.
In a jerk of movement, just as Tony goes to sit down beside, Loki it upstanding, and pacing towards the window.
"Oh, I see the game you're playing. Well, let me tell you, it is so working." Loki stands for a moment, viewing the world outside the window, dark, lit only by city lights and the joy of Friday.
But when Loki considers enough time has passed, and Tony too near to a heart attack that he just might die again, Loki initiates the strategic move of turning around.
Tony's smile falters, but the meaning behind it bloats.
"Loki." Tony nods, feigning placidity, bowing courteously with a smirk on his drink reddened lips. Loki is amused enough to reciprocate, centuries of practice showing in the arching of his back and the placement of those long and tender hands. And with all the alcohol running around his veins, Tony can't seem to keep on his feet with all the atrocious dancing that he finds himself doing, once the record changes from that slow classic into that beautifully ironic 'Thunderstruck'. He stumbles at the chorus, and with a burst of laughter Loki catches him, and with a smile lifts him back to his feet.
"Careful," He starts, voice low, but tinged with something. "Wouldn't want any injuries now, would we?"
"You're a funny man." Tony rips his arms away, pretending in this drunken stupor that he didn't need the support.
Well, he doesn't need it, but in a flash he decides he damn well wants it.
It took Tony's back seconds to find the bedroom wall. It took even less for Loki's hands to find Tony's hair and smash his head against that same wall.
It took the blink of an eye for them to be kissing, violently, passionately, bordering on angrily.
Tony's shirt was the first to decorate the carpet, Loki's soon resting beside.
"Sir," Came Jarvis' voice, ripping through the thick smog like a jagged knife. Tony opened one eye, and one eye only.
"What?" Loki continued work on their trousers, the most monstrous obstacle, second only to Jarvis.
"Director Fury is waiting outside; he wants to see you urgently." Loki pools their pants round their ankles, and is kissing his way back up his thigh.
"Just tell him I've passed out." Loki kisses higher. "Lock the doors." Loki drags his teeth teasingly up past the most important vein of the body. "Jarvis, switch off."