Title: Burning Bright

Characters: Loki/Tony, one-sided.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, no money is made, this is all riff and parody.

Warnings: Nothing I can think of. Spoilers for Avengers, but not really.

AN: This takes place post-Avengers, in the same universe as my stories Water Hemlock, Skifting and Mistletoe.

At the top of Stark Tower, Tony looks out into the sky. The light of New York washes away the stars: the sky is black, the city floats unanchored by constellations.

Beside him Loki, tells Tony about the infinite stars over the fjords of Norway, before electricity and electric lights existed. His voice is a silver harmony, a song binding the sky to the Earth. He is the most exquisite thing Tony has ever seen.

In the end, no matter what Loki had done, Thor could not bear that they would execute Loki. Thor adores Loki, that much is clear. He treats Loki with the confident familiarity of a long friendship, with the intense, awestruck passion of genuine love. It was a shock when he brought Loki to the Avengers and asked for their help in harboring him. It is almost impossible for the forces of Asgard to come and get him, now that the bifrost has been broken. The Avengers were his best hope of keeping Loki alive. And whether it was the ruthless pragmatism of Fury or the compassion of Captain America that finally won the day, Thor's request was granted.

Tony remembers the morning Loki came to Stark Tower. He was struck by the almost timid way that Loki stood in the lobby, his hair shockingly black against the coat of white rabbit fur, looking in quiet wonder at the steel majesty of Stark Tower. He was a remnant of an ancient past, uncertain and tentatively brave in the foreign soil of the modern world. Tony was so taken with him he forgot almost completely about the tesseract, the chitauri and the attack on New York.

But that is the way of humans. Their lives are short and they must always be rushing forward, trying to do everything before the curtain closes, the applause dies away and an invisible hand extinguishes the lights.

Tony volunteered to be Loki's ambassador from modernity and Thor, not wanting him to feel isolated and exiled, heartily agreed. While Thor is on Asgard, leading his family away from Loki's true location, Tony takes it upon himself to make Loki feel at home. His first few attempts are flatly rejected: Loki is too proud to accept a mortal's condescending pity. In the end, nothing he does draws Loki out. Loki has to come out on his own.

And he does, because Loki cannot stand to be ignorant and imprisoned, even if the prison is the self-imposed prison of his immortal pride. He is magical and magical beings are quick and curious by nature and cannot be contained for long. Loki comes out one night while Pepper is visiting her parents and asks Tony for a newspaper. Tony goes to the newsstand and buys him a copy of each paper. Loki reads them all in a few minutes, silently. When he finishes he looks at Tony and his large green eyes are apprehensive.

"This is not the world I remember from the centuries ago," he says.

"It's not the world I remember from yesterday," Tony says in what he hopes is a reassuring but not patronizing voice. "But that's New York. That's the modern world, it's always changing. You just have to roll with it."

Loki rolls with it.

Over the next few months, he imperiously allows Tony to introduce him to the modern world. The New York Public Library becomes a sanctuary for him, a haven of knowledge, and Loki reserves private rooms for Loki to read in. Books, however, are not his only source of knowledge: like all magical beings, Loki learns by living in the world. He spends hours walking through the city with Tony, forbidding him to talk, making him listen, instead, to the city.

At night, he weaves together for Tony the dim echoes of the day, threading together bits of conversation they have heard, a headline, a gruff sigh of a homeless woman, the howl of a dog from an apartment, the omnipresent hum of the traffic. All these things seem to be unimportant. But for Loki, like the hemlock and mistletoe, they are the ingredients of powerful spells. Loki can make the windows of the apartment buildings fly open all at once, he can make the cabs they take rise and fly over the streets; and he can make the subways tunnel to wherever he needs them to go.

Tony has always believed that magic was just science not-understood. Loki's magic is not quantifiable. It will not be logically encoded. It cannot be understood, only believed.

For a year and a half, Tony spends every spare minute with Loki. They shop on 5th Avenue whenever Loki needs anything. They go to see operas at the Met and musicals on Broadway. Loki is incandescent on the winter night they go ice skating in Rockefeller Center. He grabs Tony's hands and spins them around on the ice, his laughter rising like flame into the night.

Then the unthinkable happens. Tony collapses on the ice. He feels as if he cannot breathe. His chest clenches like steel bands are wrapped around his heart. He gasps on the cold ice. Loki stands above him in shock. He doesn't think to grab his cell phone or call 911. Why should he, Tony has not taught him what 911 even is. Instead he lifts Tony up, using his magic to help him get Tony to the car.

He does something strange and inexplicable. He doesn't drive Tony to the hospital, but out of the city, deep into the hilly forests of Westchester County. Tony thinks he is going into cardiac arrest, that Loki is inadvertently going to kill him. But when Loki finally brings the car to a stop on a forested ridge, the pain is lessening. Loki touches his face with his cool, white hands.

"Look, Tony, look up," he whispers. Tony does, and he is filled with the breathtaking vision of the infinite stars. The pain is swallowed up by the broad, open arms of the light-filled sky and Tony knows with a wild certainty that whatever is happening, this is magic.

He lays back in the convertible with its top down, looking at the sky.

"I guess you had to find out sooner or later," he says finally.

"What is wrong with you?" Loki asks. Tony likes to think that he hears genuine concern in the god's voice.

"I'm dying, that's all. Happens to everyone." He doesn't feel sorry for himself. Nevertheless every time he says it, it hurts.

"You're dying?"

"It's the heart, the Ark reactor keeps me going but…but little by little its eating away at my heart."

"Can you remove it? There must be a way to remove the shrapnel without it."

"There is. They could take out the shrapnel then take out the reactor," Tony says.

"But…?"

"But the surgery would weaken my heart so much that I would…I'd never be able to wear the suit again. I'd never be Iron Man. I wouldn't even be able to take much stress. I could live 80, 90 years but I would have to live on a quiet farm in Idaho somewhere." He sits up and smiles at Loki. "Or I could keep the Ark reactor and have, maybe, ten years as a hero."

Loki smiles softly.

"I understand," he says. "It is better to live a short time and burn brightly, than to burn dimly even if one could burn forever."

"That's my thinking," Tony smiles. Loki leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

"If you are in pain, I can help you," he says. "I can't heal you but I can take away pain." He slides over in the seat. "Now you may drive me home, if you are feeling better. If not we may wait a little while longer."

Loki's impertinent, demanding attitude is something Tony finds endearing. The fact that the beautiful prince even stooped to driving the car himself, when he barely knows how, feels significant. All the way home, while Loki sleeps in the front seat, Tony steals glances at him, memorizing the line of his back and soft braid of his hair, grown long since he arrived, that falls over his shoulder.

Tony is in love with Loki. He knows that he is. New York City, the world, even Tony's own half-mechanical heart, none of them were real until Loki breathed his life into them. He sees his former life as a life lived by a half dead man in a graveyard of half-dead things; real life was always here, with him, in that love which is the strongest magic of all.

Tonight, Loki glides effortlessly along the edge of the building, half-talking, half-singing, old Norse lays and bits of popular songs strung together like beads on a necklace. For Tony, he is the return of the starlight that the city lights thought they could banish.

When Loki steps off the ledge, Tony is waiting for him. Loki stops and looks at him carefully. He sees something is different. Maybe he knows what Tony will say.

Tony takes both Loki's hands and pulls him closer, kissing him gently on the mouth.

"I love you," he whispers against Loki's cheek. "I'm not sorry I do. If I thought it would destroy the entire world I wouldn't be sorry and I wouldn't stop."

"I know you do," Loki says. Tony's heart—his real heart, not the battered, broken down muscle in his chest—tightens with hope. Loki lowers his eyes, then looks back at him.

"Tony," he says. "I have no memory that does not have Thor in it. We have lived a life together and that cannot be unlived. Our hearts were woven together. But—" And here Loki falters. Almost he seems overcome with emotion.

"But what?" Tony asks.

"But I promise you that when your time comes, I will drive you out to the forests to see the stars. And I will stay with you, until you go."

Tony knows now that he made the right decision. It was better to live a short life, soaring glorious above the mortal world, than to live a long tired life, wheezing and wracked with pain. He could not endure a long life without Loki, the thing he has come to love more than anything. Ten years will be bearable, ten years where his real heart burns with a love beyond mortal calculation, a love that will burn it to ash.

Tony's love could destroy the Avengers and it could endanger the world. He hopes only that whatever comes now will be glorious.