First of all, thank you all so much for for all the hits, kudos, bookmarks and lovely comments!
I present you the first chapter of "Chaos of Worship"! Here a few warnings with minor spoilers:
Plenty of pain, betrayal and issues for Tony, Loki isn't even conscious for this chap due to off-screen but implied torture , and Pepper, well, Pepper picks the wrong things to be afraid of, and Tony juggles with all the problems like a pro! Jarvis and 'the babies' are Tony's everything, and he'd do anything to protect them. I do not know yet how long this is going to get, since I took a completely different direction than I planned before, but I'll do my best not to leave too much time between the chapters, or any extreme cliffhangers.
Have fun reading! -BiD
It was a few days after Loki, interesting, chaotic Loki had been escorted back to Asgard, when it started.
Pain.
In the beginning it was barely there, a tingle under his skin or a slight ache in his muscles, barely distinguishable between all the other bruises and fractures from the Chitauri fight, and didn't pay it much heed.
After three weeks he realised that, no, it wasn't from their fight, it was something else, but an analysis revealed that his body was as alright as it ever was.
Jarvis's outer firewalls have been breached.
The AI had of course smacked them out of his net like the flies they were, frying their equipment while doing so and pinpointed their location. It took them all but a moment to realise that it was the Helicarrier. SHIELD had tried to hack his Jarvis.
A bare minute later he had Fury on the phone, asking, to his own surprise, rather calmly, "What the fuck was that supposed to be?"
The answer of "Your sentient creations are too dangerous to be left with a civilian, Stark." was the wrong one.
They spent days writing new Firewalls for Jarvis, DUM-E and all his other babies, perfect walls of code that would protect was is his from any harm of the non physical kind.
The first night that Tony woke up, he thought that it was from a nightmare, but the pain lasted, his skin burning, blood boiling, his body oddly cold.
No scans he and Jarvis made brought any clarity in the matter, after an hour the pain got tolerable, after almost two days it vanished completely.
Their search on who had spilled Jarvis's sentience went sluggish, and between waves of agony, blissed not-pain, Iron man and his duties for SI, he detached himself from SHIELD as much as at all possible, cutting the funds, deleting any information they had on him from their systems, and throughoutly explained to Fury what would happen if they tried to touch anything that's him or his again.
By now he was almost used to the lasting, and randomly appearing pain in his body, except when he wasn't and it being bad enough for him to double over.
Pain medication didn't do a thing about it, not even something like Morphine, he knew, he'd tried, and it was only a matter of time till one of the worse waves would hit while around people. Thankfully, by now it had only happened in the secrecy of his workshop or bedroom.
Tony accidentally tripped over a video file that showed Pepper and 'not-dead-after-all-Phil' talking, and he just wanted to click it away when he hear her say "You need to do something about JARVIS, Phil, it scares me." "We will, Pepper, don't worry about it."
The sound of their voices hung in the sudden silence of the workshop, and no, this wasn't possible.
"J." he murmured, feeling his blood drain from his face, and clung to the phantom burn of his bones, feeling like he was about to fall apart.
Jarvis though, usually the definition of 'proper language' just gave a few blips.
Blips.
He hadn't used blips in ages; they were from his learning days, when he did not know what word to use, or how to express himself.
Pepper!
Tony's brain whited out, blue-screen, stopped, and he felt, he felt, he didn't know what he felt, he just jumped to his feet and ran up the stairs, to his penthouse.
She would be there, she would be there and she'd tell him that this was a misunderstanding, and this, this couldn't be real!
He slammed open the wall panel that had the stairs hidden from the pent house, and called out her name.
His heart raced, and he followed her voice in to the kitchen.
"Tony! What happened? You're white as a sheet! And I told you no Armour in the pent-house!"
Confused he looked down at himself, and yes, he still wore the left gauntlet with which's sensibility he had toyed while watching the video sequence.
The video.
He felt himself sway, as the burning sensation spread, and flinched when Pepper tried to help him.
"Why did you tell Coulson about Jarvis." he demanded, praying that there was some logical explanation, but her face changed, and he saw, horrified that she knew exactly what he was talking about, and -
"It is dangerous Tony, it controls the Tower, and the Suit, the satellites, weapons, information, everything, and you don't even have a way to stop it if it get's out of control, do you even still have control?"
Oh god did it hurt. It hurt and it took him a moment to realise that, no, it didn't, it was the sudden absence of pain that made his skin oversensitive.
And for a moment his mind was too stuck in that shocked numbness, but then, then he felt himself cracking, drowning, burning and oh god why was it always the people he though he could trust?!
Why, why, why ?!
Tony couldn't think.
He couldn't think, and he couldn't speak, couldn't breathe and he felt like he was drowning all over, in that tub in Afghanistan, at the brink of death just not to die after all, and he honestly wasn't sure if he'd make it this time. If he even wanted to.
"Miss Potts," Jarvis spoke, "Sir wishes you to leave." His voice, usually filled with dry humour or exasperation was entirely, terrifyingly free of those emotions he had developed. He sounded like an apparatus. Siri. it flashed through Starks mind.
Pepper bristled, "You can't speak on Tony's behalf, you are a machine." she stepped towards the inventor, voice softening and trying to reach him, "Tony-"
but with his name, the man snapped straight, looking at her with what she would recognise as his serious-business-mask, just that this one didn't even remotely look like a mask.
"Jarvis is, will, and has been speaking on my behalf for many times. Miss Potts, you are here by dismissed from you position as CEO from Stark Industries, you are to leave the premises of the Tower at this instant, any belongings will be sent to an address you are to provide. SI is willed to pay you 70% of your wages, despite the leak of confidential information you have caused, if you do not cause any further disturbances, until you found a new working position. Good Day Miss Potts."
Peppers jaw dropped, "Tony! You have to see reason! I am just trying to protect you! This is-" her voice faltered as she saw Tony raising his left hand, the one with the gauntlet, rising, palm pointed at her.
"Miss Potts, please don't make me ask twice." Tony's voice was cool, much colder than he himself felt, his body numb, too pain free, too loose, much more detached and, god he hated doing this, he hated threatening her and he really didn't want to point the Repulsor at her, but oh how he wanted.
How he wanted to destroy her, flay her, rip her apart for betraying him like this!
But she left, lips pressed to a thin line she pulled her coat over her business costume, picked up her bag and left through the 'official' lift.
It took almost a week for the foreign phantom pain to return, but when it came back he welcomed it.
All week he had felt like he had lost a limb, too light, to frail and fragile, as if he'd just drift apart when not watching out.
He lost himself in the work. After firing Pep- Potts, he had to take care of SI himself, and while, yes, it was a shitload of work, he did it anyway, if only to blend out the emptiness he felt, to keep himself from drinking till he'd enter a stupor, and without whom would he have never been able to do it?
Jarvis.
Jarvis, who had scheduled him everything, gave him suggestions and even took care of some matters of his own, always checking back with Tony that it was correct and right.
It was Sunday morning when he dropped into his favourite chair in the workshop for the first time all week, that he realised the dull ache in his body, the pain that wasn't his and mentally he latched onto it and pulled, until it was a strong burning sensation, and he wrapped it around himself like a cocoon, trying not to break, and suddenly felt relief.
It wasn't his relief, he realised after a moment, it was the same as the pain, foreign, not his or him, and fuck.
What was that anyway?!
For a moment he allowed himself to think of Loki, clever broken chaotic Loki, and wondered if it was him, if this 'worship' connection could go both ways, but it was impossible to get answers to that without having the god there to ask, and decided not to worry about it for now.
Instead he thought about the new office building he had bought, and the SI employees he had transferred there, all of them. He couldn't stand the Idea of someone else in his tower, and was really glad for a moment that the other Avengers hadn't taken his offer to come back to the Tower.
The Assassins were still with Shield, just as Cap, Thor was in Asgard, and Bruce had decided to go back to India, he had missed the place, being useful in a not-hulk way, and Tony didn't take it personal, he thought he might understand.
The press had taken the whole 'Stark man's up!' about being CEO surprisingly well, and after only a few weeks he was titled the 'most relentless CEO SI has ever had' and the stock rose, since this time he really didn't shit around about it, sticking to plans, schedules and 'reforming' board member's opinions to his liking with his silver tongue.
It was three months after Loki's transport to Asgard, that he was in his workshop, working on a huge improvement of the Repulsor, his skin oversensitive from the last, truly extreme wave of pain, when Jarvis announces four Asgardians and Loki on the roof.
The suit wrapped around Tony before he could even finish saying 'Armour', and a mere moment later he found himself hovering over his very own towers roof.
And yes, there were four, quite obvious, Asgardians he didn't know, muttering about 'how to enter these halls' and a body lying between them, in thick chains and bleeding, unconscious as it seemed, dressed in rags, long black hair whipping in the wind, and oh fuck that was Loki!
"Hello, can I help?" he called through the speaker system of the suit, and landed on his roof with a good distance, the four turned around to face him.
"We have no matter with you, construct" Ass one called out, "but go and tell your master that we are to deliver this to Lord Stark."
Tony narrowed his eyes, and retracted his helmet, Lord Stark, eh? "You are speaking to Lord Stark, so watch your tongue."
Very, very quickly the four's eyes widened and they fell to one knee, "We beg your forgiveness Lord Stark, the Allfather ordered us to deliver this," he gestured to the lump on the ground that was Loki, "to you, as compensation for the inconvenience it has caused you, my Lord."
Tony tilted his head, as if he had to think about it, instead of just running over to Loki and help him.
"His magic?" he asked, better get all the info he could.
One of the Asgardians stood up, took a step over to Loki and raised a limp arm, "These silver bracelets make him unable to use it, and he can not take them off. It this present of the Allfather sufficient as compensation, my Lord?"
Tony gave it a fake moment of consideration again, "Sure, why not. Who knows that I have him? For how long? Any instructions on what to or not to do with him?"
"Only the Allfather and us four, you may fare with him as you please, my Lord, and as long as it you deem proper, he only must not die."
Then Tony nodded, "Ok, I can do that, this'll be great. You can, I guess, beam yourself back or something. Thanks to your Allfather."
"Very well, Lord Stark. Good morrow." and all four of them grabbed an object and vanished in a flash of magic, leaving a wounded, bleeding Loki on the roof.
"Well, fuck." Tony hissed, "Jarvis, I need to have the rest of the day free, and only the absolute necessary next week, your call."
"Of course, sir." Jarvis answered calmly, "I'll have the guest room ready."