But now I think I'll find it easier to continue on CoW (sorry that it's taking so long). Also, I understand that loss of limb is a serious traumatic event, but please be aware that this is a fictional character who can take a beating, and still is horrified by it, but has the means to do something against/with it. I'm not trying to play anything light here. Kudos, comments and proper critique is always welcome!
Please enjoy.
If he thought about it, he could see how fucking lucky he had been.
Lucky enough to be there, exactly there and exactly then and exactly under those circumstances instead of half a meter to the left, and honestly that hadn't been luck, that had been him and his stupidity ad being unlucky as hell.
No, he had been lucky for who had been there, on his fucking back and how unstable and un-villainous the god had been the past weeks.
But he didn't think about it of course.
Thinking about what had happened in past hours would only throw up another thousand questions, on top of the list he already had.
Pressing his left hand to his (healed or recreated?) ribs and the thick, pink starburst tissue over them, he pointedly ignored the flaring, flaming phantom pain of his right arm.
If he closed his eyes and flexed his muscles he could fell it, feel the skin crease at the elbow, stretch over his knuckles and the slight pull of his wrist he always got when not wearing the wrist-wrap.
But he knew better.
He knew that what he felt as his right arm was nothing but air and all there was to it was seven centimetres of upper arm under his shoulder and a thick batch of bandages wrapping around it and his shoulder.
Starting at the elbow the arm had been turned to ashes by fucking dragon fire and in an operation some hours ago they had to remove even more, thanks to the metal of the armour that had molten over the resulting stump.
Almost passively he felt panic rising in his chest again, like ice water, but he pushed it down.
He had two panic attacks already and he felt too exhausted for a third one.
Besides, he had already decided to build a prosthesis that would surpass the abilities of a simple human arm.
He had sketches and designs for prototypes already, made on a coffee high with some movie featuring cyborgs and cyberbrains running in the background.
So he decidedly pushed that thought aside again and because he couldn't find anything else to occupy his mind with and the painkillers not sending him to sleep for some reason, his mind went back to what he had tried to not think of.
But fuck that if he wanted to go through the day again he would, he did have to re-establish what had been real and what blurred or hallucinated from pain and shock.
Today had started quite normal.
He got woken up by a nightmare that was impossible to remember after opening his eyes, only the impression of water in his nose and throat and the icy hands of fear squeezing his chest.
He drank two cups of coffee, he showered, dressed and vanished into the workshop, tinkering on a few projects for SI which he had neglected until now.
Some time around lunch Jarvis had informed him that the Avengers had been called to assemble, since a number of, as of yet unidentified robots were attacking the city.
That had been when things had gotten nasty.
What started with seven unidentified robots, which turned out to be from Hydra, evolved into a clusterfuck containing said robots destroying the city and fighting Doombots, and Doom trying to get back a the robots and Loki, and Loki trying to not be mauled by an enormous, fire breathing fucking dragon that suddenly appeared from seemingly nowhere attacking... well, everything.
It was as if all major villains had suddenly decided to attack at the same time, accidentally overlapping schedules and fighting over who get's to play first.
And the Avengers?
They had been in the middle of it.
Bruce, or rather the Hulk doing his best to reduce the numbers of anything that came near him, and Tony keeping the dragon's attention away from the civilians while everyone else tried to evacuate the city as quickly as possible, since they were in the middle of the city centre.
He didn't know what the others were doing, who still was there and who wasn't.
All his focus on the dragon who tried to swipe him out of the air with his tail or crush him in those enormous not-quite-talons/not-quite-paws.
Loki shared the dragon's focus with him, almost creating a morbid game of tag, waiting for the other to get almost maimed by jaws and drawing attention to themselves allowing the other an escape.
For now the god was tagged as potential ally by his HUD, still would be.
Tony, dare said it had been fun, until what felt like hours later and the dragon showing no sign of fatigue, unlike Loki or himself, the other Avengers suddenly jumped in, tearing their routine apart and attacking Loki as well.
He had expected for the trickster to lash back, but Loki had only growled and stuck closer to Tony, who didn't attack, even letting Loki hitch a ride or two.
It was during one of those that the dragon suddenly spat fire at Tony, and really?
If Loki, the god that had tried to kill Tony more than once by now, if he hadn't suddenly shoved at his shoulder and leg it would have been more than 'just' Tony's arm and armour that melted away into nothingness.
But it was the sudden shock and agonizing pain and absence of a repulsor that threw him entirely off balance.
Now, with a mostly clear head he could remember Loki trying to stir him, to get him onto one of the rooftops while the 'team' hadn't even realised what happened.
The dragon had other plans, driving one of it's enormous claws into the suit, through his chest (not the reactor thankfully) out the other side until it pierced Loki's shoulder, or what he assumed to be Loki's shoulder, holding them together like shish kebab.
After that things got... blurry.
Very blurry and out of focus.
Things he definitely knew didn't happen was a heart operation in a cave, because that already happened and didn't even make sense.
Things that might have happened was hearing JARVIS swear and things that definitely happened was Loki teleporting them away, ripping the chest plate of the suit off and ... well, healing him, pulling ocean green magic strings that Tony had suddenly seen everywhere.
Ok maybe that part wasn't real, but Loki definitely had healed that hole in his chest somehow, while bleeding all over him and Tony hoped that he didn't have some alien STD now, but fuck all Loki had saved his life twice and fought with him for almost three hours with out stabbing him in the back.
Quite the opposite, evidently.
After that the god had suddenly looked.. oddly human.
A bit shocked and confused, looking between the direction they could hear the dragon rampage, Tony and his own hands looking about as lost about what happened as Tony had felt.
Then the god suddenly had lost his balance, staggered and vanished with a look of frustration.
Just now Tony realised what Loki hadn't spoken a word during any of it.
Usually they'd quip and throw insults and taunts at each other, but usually Loki also didn't fight with him or be that sickly pale, or look that confused and haunted as he had.
Well, whatever had thrown the trickster over like that, Tony owed him twice his life and not too little either, so maybe, just maybe he'd be able too help him.
And since when did he want to help villains?
But of course, his brain rattled down a good list of things, the most glaring of all was
"He is me if I had lost it in Afghanistan!"
Because seriously?
He was.
Sorta.
One day Thor had stormed into Stark tower, suddenly accepting his offer to stay there, unlike the others.
After almost shorting out the entire building with his anger, Tony had approached him and gotten the full story on Loki.
In the end he had felt a bit ashamed for being surprised that Thor's anger wasn't directed at Loki, but at his father Odin, and Heimdall (and a bit to his mother too) for the way they had handled the whole "You are actually from the enemy race."-secret and Loki's reaction to it.
The thing was that he could empathise with Loki and his reaction to it, and really didn't have it in him to actually insult or truthfully attempt to kill him during their fights after that.
So instead he had started asking concealed questions and giving backhanded compliments on Loki's magic (because fuck all, Harry Potter was to that magic like an AAA Battery to an ArcReactor).
And if Loki's attempts to "kill" the Avengers usually left him with a few bruises, a green beard and hair, well, no one really commented.
Except for Clint of course who just wouldn't stop making up not-so-funny new tree names.
He just hoped that the god had had enough magic left to heal his own shoulder, wondering if Loki could regenerate his arm if he wanted to.
A nurse came, obviously pissed off about him sitting in his bed instead of sleeping, since it was 'in the middle of the fucking night' and dosed him with something than made his thoughts unbearably slow and down right erased the pain of his bruised knee and headache, but didn't help against the burning in his arm.
Anyway phantom pain wasn't real pain anyway, right?
Less than five minutes later he was in dreamland.
Within the next few days he released himself from the hospital, ignored all warnings that he should rest and started working on a serious prostheses for his arm, and write a new program that'd let him control the prosthesis with the DCI with which he usually just used to control the armour, but it'd work just as well.
The press was still loosing it's shit about Tony Stark being disabled and fighting together with the arch enemy Loki, and him 'most certainly' getting kicked out of the Avengers for being disabled, and if he'd keep up SI and could still invent new stuff.
Wavering between pity, shock, scandal and 'what does he expect when fighting with the enemy?
As far as he knew the brain wasn't located in his right arm, so he didn't see what they made such a fuss about.
Even if he had to drag himself back from panic attacks, induced by sudden bouts of incredibly disturbing (and oddly interesting) flashes of body-horror.
In fact, after he had this prosthesis done and working the way he wanted it to?
He'd downgrade, de-weaponize and secure it as much as possible and then handing the thing to the SI medical department.
Why he didn't have the idea sooner, well, he could say he'd been obsessed with the Braille tablet and making his Repulsors more effective while using less energy.
Six weeks after the incident he had his prostheses where nothing had been and worn it in, being able to use it as well as his real hand (if not better actually), the only problem he still encountered was that the couldn't feel it and sometimes just gripped things too hard, but he was working on neurotransmitters that could be read by his body.
So far he hadn't fought since his arm was still recovering, but flown a few rounds to ensure that using the DCI for the suit and the arm wouldn't interfere with each other but it was fine.
Fury had for some weird reason tried to pin his loss of arm to Loki, maybe to make Tony feel better (haha, yeah, sure), but after almost twenty minutes of explaining why exactly Fury can shove those reason's where the sun doesn't shine, he was now the first one to be called if Loki got sighted.
He didn't.
Nine weeks after the incident the phantom pain had gotten a lot better, the arm healed properly and he was written back into the response team.
He had revolutionised prostheses and gained another sixteen patents he could just add to the seemingly endless list.
And it was fine, it was all fine, even if Pepper yelled at him more often than usually, especially after seeing the thin leather glove he wore other the metal hand, but when didn't she yell at him?
No, what really grated on him was that Loki was still missing.
Usually the trickster would appear almost weekly to cause minor or major mischief and mayhem, but he had been gone for full nine weeks and by now Tony actually admitted to himself that he was honest to god worried.
He really didn't want to be the cause of another person dying, who had saved his life.
Yinsen's had been enough he really didn't have to add Loki to that list as well.
He wouldn't!
On Saturday of week ten he woke up on his workbench from something, and it took him a long moment (and Jarvis' careful warning) to get alert enough and realise that it was Loki, standing opposite him staring at his not-arm.
The god looked.. hunted.
His armour was dirty and covered in dried blood, ripped at some parts, two of the coat tails and the shoulder protector entirely missing.
Loki's hair was wild, curly and long.
His skin still quite grey and deep, dark rings around his eyes that spoke of little sleep, some bruises, cuts and a split lip told him how bad Loki really was off, since the god always healed those in a matter of minutes.
Though even if Loki looked quite deranged, and even if his hand shook a bit where he leaned on the table, and even if he was twitchy enough to almost decapitate Dummy out of reflex, for making an enquiring whirr to greet the stranger (and if Tony hadn't grabbed his arm quick enough he'd have to tear the god limb for limb).
Loki's eyes were awake and alert as they hadn't quite been during the fight.
Then finally, after Tony told him for the fifth time that the workshop is safe, Loki finally started speaking.
"I come to you to ask a favour, Anthony Stark." he said, pulling the same face that some people made when admitting to genital herpes.
Oh Tony could say so many things now, seriously. But Loki looked crappy and uncomfortable enough that he humoured him.
"For a lack of better options, of course."
"Of course." Loki copied, a second of thankful relief passing his face.
"I owe you two, so favour away."
For a long moment the god was quiet, as if he had to rethink on how or if to ask, but then he just straightened up again, throwing another glance at Dummy who instantly hid behind You and Butterfingers. Making Loki smile oddly.
"I need a safe place to rest." he just stated, leaning against the workbench with his back to Tony, creating a small, glowing green illusion of a dragonfly, coaxing Dummy out of his hiding spot and making the other two whirr and beep in excitement.
"Sure. I can offer you one of my houses, they're pretty safe."
"Pretty safe is not enough. What is the safest place you own?"
The bots were now chasing the magical insect through the workshop, almost throwing over a stack of boxes.
"Uh, the penthouse? Or may-"
"The penthouse will suffice then." Loki instantly answered, turning around to finally, properly look Tony into the face.
"Hey, but I live there!"
"That hardly matters to me." Loki answered, waving a hand dismissively, adding another, this time purple dragonfly to the game.
For a moment Tony actually thought it through.
A trickster god who barely could qualify as neutral, who had tried to kill him multiple times, cost him seven armours, used to be a picture book villain, saved his life twice and was now playing with his bots and smiled at them like they were children.
Smiled at them like Tony knew he did when they played hide and seek with tools.
"Ok." he then said, and suddenly Loki whirled around staring at him.
So, Loki hadn't expected him to actually agree.
Ok.
"Under two conditions." and he could practically see walls of cold and distrust rebuilding,
"One, you have to be an at least neutral party while you stay. No killing, no maiming, no villain stuff, ok?"
Carefully Loki nodded and stared at him intently, probably trying to guess the second one, but Tony would bet his right arm (haha) that even if he tried Loki'd never guess.
"And play with the bots every once in a while," Tony added smiling, nodding towards You who stopped just next to Loki, presenting him a piece of scrap metal that had the glowing outline of a dragonfly.
Carefully the god took it, and made it fly away again, turning back to Tony with a surprisingly bright and genuine smile.
"I shall do that, then. Thank you Anthony."
"Call me Tony, you sound like my mother."
"I don't take kindly to orders," Loki replied, smiling sharp, but it softened when Dummy tugged on his sleeve, "Tony."
"Of course you don't." he muttered, making himself a new cup of coffee, almost breaking of the cups handle again and wondering who would try to rip off his other arm first, for rooming with the God of Chaos.
Fury or Pepper?
But then he got barrelled over by three excitedly chirping, whirring and beeping bots, though once he was sitting upright again with Dummy's help there was a Dragonfly on his new, fake, metal arm.