Note: I've seen Loki visiting Tony's dream a lot, some for the reversed situation; but I haven't explored the fandom much to find one where Tony meets Thanos without any warning. Sets between Avengers and IM3... I think?

(...Actually first fic ever for the fandom as well.)

For Asha D's Biweekly Prompt Challenge #2. Not beta-ed, so pointing out mistakes is highly appreciated.

Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel and its universe.

The last time New York citizens have a wide-scale emergency situation was around two months ago—or is it three? He's not sure—but a situation where it warrants utter demolition of the city buildings and massive collateral damage, Tony puts his guess on eight.

Or seven. Tony doesn't know, even though he's pretty sure he should.

As it is, most troubles can be handled with one or two Avengers dispatched, and a rotating schedule of daily patrol have managed to keep life steady and less surprising for even the twitchiest of greedy businessmen. Sometimes when the night is actually used by most of the people for resting, they take over the roles of the policemen, too, with minor scuffles occurring every now and then.

But, well—on one side they are the Avengers, there to save the day (Tony snorts); on the other side they are also humans… and one god, with their respective duties, and there are always times when the boredom is too much to even be bored with it.

Bruce is still a doctor, so where conferences are held and he is asked to talk about something, there he goes. It's still Science, Tony knows, but he has never had too much interest in medicine, just enough for it to be developed as far as the research team in his company could. The times when Bruce is back in town and comes over to visit him in the workshop, though, Tony relinquishes that very much.

Natasha and Clint are still first and foremost SHIELD agents, so it's the same case with Bruce, with the exception that their periods abroad are significantly longer and a bit more difficult to keep up with. Tony could always put JARVIS to it, but eh, he's not that keen on learning what SHIELD personnel do if it's not in direct contact with him.

Steve, the good ol' Captain, has finally accepted his offer to stay in the Tower, rather than getting his own place. It's not like Tony is short on space anyway, what with the amount of time he spends with the machines down there, Steve is the only man in the place other than his employees few floors below. He goes downtown quite a lot, though; JARVIS keeps him informed on the in-and-out goings on the Avengers' level of the Tower.

And Thor, bless the Asgardian, drops by unannounced most times until Tony lays down a set of rules for when he does come, complete with a structural reinforcement of the roof, windows, floor and walls—basically everything in the topmost levels. He likes tinkering with stuff, yes, but fixing the same thing over and over again with the same cause of wreckage is starting to get on his nerve.

So what of him?

Pepper still keeps the company up and running smoothly, still with the same unexplainable instinct to know when Tony's been up for more than 30 hours with coffee as his only sustenance.

(He suspects there might be a conspiracy between his AI and Pep, but J has the benefit of doubt here.)

And so Tony has built several more suits until now, and he's working on Mark XVII's blueprint and technical specification when he realizes, with a belated 'oh' and a pause in the tightening of one of the cables; that he's rather bored.

Not entirely the kind of lazy, nothing-to-do bored, but more of a repetition-of-the-same-thing bored, the kind that you don't realize that you're feeling it until you pause and squints with a certain angle.

Tony halts, stares blankly at nothing in front of him for several seconds, before placing the screwdriver back in the toolbox, and stretches. Jesus, but the way his joints pop feels like they've died one by one and then being reborn in an ocean of glorious flame. He lets out a satisfied groan, arches his back just to wrap it up, and slumps against the table.

Now that he has had a break, the mattress—which Pepper placed behind the rows of shelves some long time ago—seems so inviting that Tony nearly gives in to the urge to crawl there and sleeps face-down and just not wake up.

But the image of his own bed is more alluring, the showers too; he probably needs cold water to his head just to clear it a bit.

The inventor drags himself up while grabbing the tablet from somewhere on the far end of the bench, and starts for the elevator. "JARVIS, lights off please."

He leaves the workshop, the room dimming behind him until the only visible source of light was from the hall of armors, and the only display on the glass walls is the clock showing 1.18 AM in soft blue letters.

-.-.-.-

To be brutally honest, Tony doesn't like to remember his dreams. Sure he's had some interesting inspirations for his suits from it, but generally speaking, he dislikes it. To say that it stems from the occasional nightmares that jar him awake is a very simple understatement, but Tony's always been partial to lucid dreams—which don't involve caves and explosions, thank you very much.

He finds it rather odd, this dream: he is standing on nothing, surrounded completely by darkness with naught visibility, except that he can still see his toes which should not be possible, in theory.

Tony tries wriggling them, just curious, and is satisfied when they still work as they're supposed to be.

He is still wearing his pajamas, which a small part of him reminds that if this a lucid dream then he'd probably feel a bit silly at the morning.

Something crinkles on his pocket, and Tony frowns. A paper means that he can write down the events that are going to happen, provided that he finds some sort of writing utensil around the place. He'll be able to remember what this is all about; otherwise it's just him, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist not-quite-a-hero, clad in his pajamas and standing a bit more than stupidly in a place he has never visited in his waking hours.

…There's a diminutive flash of white-blue just on the edge of his peripheral vision, so he turns to the direction he thinks it was from, and squints. Tony's pretty sure he's not mistaken, because it is dark and any kind of light in absolute darkness is very eye-catching. It can't be his arc reactor, except if the light from it hits a mirror and that is just plain-out creepy; alone (probably) in the dark with an empty single sheet of paper, surrounded by reflective surfaces (metal, mirror, not stone, not a cave)—one actual being, his (dream) self, and countless other unreal eyes staring back at him with curious (or empty, or judging) eyes, moving in sync with him.

Tony shakes his head, once, twice; tries to gather all his focus and figure out where he is and what he just saw—and falls over when his foot hits something on the surface he's standing on. There's a sickening sound of a crunch (he vaguely hopes it's not a skull), and he expects to be jolted awake when he hits his head—

—yet there's not a bump, and the only reason he feels dizzy at all is because suddenly he is standing on nothing; like all the blood in his body just up and rushes to his brains, but Tony cannot tell, it is a dream and if gravity can simply be denied then what is a simple sense of direction? It feels like he is spinning, head up and down and sideways with his arms flailing, but there is a possibility that it is simply his brain defaulting back to its normal, most basic settings to prevent the panic creeping in, and he can't really know, can he.

The inventor might be falling through nothing yet everything at the same time, and the Science part of him scrambles to pull apart and analyze the facts even as he feels the itching urge of panic that may be, most possibly be bordering on hysteric clawing on his throat. So Tony clamps his mouth, tries to force that urge back down, shuts his eyes and stills his movement; ignoring the loud thud-thud-thudTHUD on his ears and braces for a bone-shattering impact, not unlike his last encounter with foreign outer space.

Then the sensation of falling stops just like that and his sense of direction fixed immediately. It is exactly the same condition as when he first opened his eyes in this dreamscape, with a notable exception: whereas his feet were sure beneath him, now he is… floating. Just slowly, like swimming but without the actual water—Tony distantly wonders what it would take to wake his physical body back in New York.

A minute or more later, he guesses—with no watch or light it's hard to tell—before his bare feet touch a solid ground, one that he can recognize immediately: rocks.

He sincerely hopes that it's not another goddamn cave, fuck, after spinning and falling and floating and he still ends up in a cave?

Jesus.

Tony wobbles a bit when he finally lands, knees and palms hitting the floor to support his weight, and he draws a deep breath. His heartbeat is no longer that loud in his ears, instead it is replaced by whispers of a conversation not entirely in a language he's known. He filters it into two: the first one is a gravelly, rusty sort of voice that one usually associates with typical movie villains; and the second one is deep, with mocking and scathing intentions laced into each fluctuation of tone.

The second voice is something he's heard before, he swears, and yet it takes him two failed attempts at standing before his senses finally place the voice.

No wonder he can't begin to explain the events so far even to himself; it's probably all magic and stuff he's never had the chance to study extensively.

The more steps he takes, the louder the whispers get, until Tony realizes he can now hear the words all in English. Dismissing it as another inexplicable quality of the dream, he finally finds a high enough rock to help him stand up. Breathing through his mouth twice, he makes sure it's as quiet as possible—he's not risking a chance that one or both of the speakers might notice his presence.

…But it's too big of a temptation, and Tony's always been eager for new, fascinating things, and Magic has been placed in the top three ever since Loki brought the Chitauri down to New York. If Natasha's here, she can probably maintain the subtlety level near zero, but Tony has something of a problem when it comes to subtlety—he is capable of it, but he tends to dismiss it at the earliest possible moment.

So he sneaks a peek, and the first thing he sees is Loki's scepter shining bright gold, and then the blue orb on the pointy end, glowing with so much intensity that Tony doesn't realize the fingers tapping on the arc reactor are his. He pauses, stares down at his hand, and scowls.

It is at this point that he becomes aware of the fact that there is no more sound around him, not even his breathing. Just silence, pressing into his eardrums until he feels dizzy from it—then it clears with a pop, and Tony finds himself staring at some… thing.

He turns his head to the left to find Loki, hands cuffed, whose overall attire indicates that he hasn't spent all the time—after Thor brought him back to Asgard—in prison. Those bright green eyes, so much different than the last time he saw them in his Tower, are a whirlpool of raw, honest expressions: Tony can see surprise as the most evident, then a hint of morbid curiosity, and the rest is just a discernible sea of annoyance, anger, fatigue and… fear?

Then the gravelly chuckle from before returns, so he returns his attention to the… thing, standing before him, and suddenly he feels stupid.

This is not quite his dream as it is Loki's; aside from that, the only two beings currently on the near vicinity are dressed as properly as possible, and here he is, standing barefoot, hair still disheveled from sleep, wearing a dark blue pajamas courtesy of Pepper.

…Tony supposes it's just his luck he didn't go to bed with boxers only.

He clears his throat, and almost speaks when he feels something chilly brush his chest.

The inventor freezes, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. It's—this is clearly not something a mortal should ever stumble upon, not in this life, not in death, and still not on the life after if Tony ever believes in such a thing. There's that chuckle again, and this time he can't stop the cold feeling that runs down his spine.

"Ah," the voice says, and there might be something of a malicious delight there, Tony really should stop thinking like that, otherwise he'll jinx the whole thing. "A mortal, in this place."

He has to settle for a scowl that gives nothing away, because he can't show anything that resembles fear—this one can probably sense it before Tony can even acknowledge it. And he tries to speak, he really does, but there is no air that goes through his vocal chords, even if he can taste the weight of unspoken words stuck uneasily inside his mouth.

"Have you any inkling of whom this might be, son of Laufey?"

Huh. Laufey. Thor's mentioned it once, he recalls; not of Asgard, no, somewhere cold and freezing, frozen land… frost, frost giant? Odinson, son of Odin, son of Laufey… Laufeyson? The way that these beings name their kin is very straightforward, even if it does cause a bit of difficulty when addressing one of their kind. Odindaughter, his mind supplies, Ms. Odindaughter, a mouthful thing to say on a frequent basis.

"Not one thing?" It continues when Loki speaks nothing at all. At this point he cannot deduce whether it would be better or worse if the god of mischief actually said something, even a simple tsk or a noncommittal grunt.

"Be that as it may, young prince, this one is but a mere mortal, do you not agree?" It laughs lightly, and Tony cannot help the shudder that wrecks his body when rough fingers circle the cloth that covers his arc reactor.

There is a low hum, and then the voice continues, "But this glowing metal, embedded in your chest… I wonder what it is?" Tony swallows, ignoring the prickly feeling on his back from Loki's staring. "It emits a pulse of energy similar to that of the Tesseract, in perfect accordance with the beating of your heart…" It trails off, and the inventor squelches down the urge to retort with something snarky, along the lines of I've had lots of people wondering about the arc reactor, oh great unknown being, d'you mind getting in line because it might result in an instant snap of his neck that will hopefully be painless, but the image of Pepper finding his head detached from his body back in New York leaves him feeling vaguely ill.

He throws a glance at Loki, still silent and looking at him blankly, like he has something to say but prefers to keep it unvoiced. He is good at that, keeping a perfect mask, probably even better than Tasha, and certainly far better than Tony can ever hope to have. He wears his heart on his sleeves (Steve does too, a petulant part of him protests), but he likes to believe that he can easily ignore non-physical stuff that should've stabbed him in the heart repeatedly, figuratively speaking.

"It is not as strong as the Tesseract—" well duh, if it is then Loki would've ripped it out of his chest before throwing him out of the window, and the fleeting thought startles himself.

No wonder that mojo with the Glowstick of Destiny didn't work back then, goddamn, same energy wavelength—Tony facepalms internally. No shit, Sherlock, it takes you months to figure out the reason? And someplace in a dream too?

"—but it is still an object of power, and I shall take this as a small consolation for myself that the Tesseract is still not in my possession, son of Laufey."

Then Tony sees with a sick clarity: a hand that materializes out of nowhere in the darkness, senses it so close to his heart that it might've skipped a beat or two, and hears a horrified whisper of oh god no, not entirely sure if it is his or Loki's or a combination of both—but probably his.

His pulse is loud again in his ears, and there is something glowing white-blue, floating amidst the closing darkness, so Tony reaches out with his hand to grab it yet meets nothing but air.

He remembers a blur of green and gold, of the resigned feeling that his feet lose yet another solid standing ground, and the light dimming until there is total black again—his right hand latches to something smooth and Tony grips it hard like his life depends on it.

Or his dream self, he's not quite sure anymore.

The sensation of free-falling hits him again; swirling images of galaxies and realms fluttering so beautifully behind his closed eyes that he can't help but to compare it with his last visit through the alien-hole: it was dark, then, nothing but the blackness surrounding him; but now it feels like he can tear the fabric of time and space and goes anywhere he pleases—

-.-.-.-

Tony wakes up with a start, eyes blinking owlishly at his ceiling.

His left hand moves on its own accord to the middle of his chest, and he almost sobs in relief that it does not meet anything empty—but there is no light, not a glow on his chest, and when he raises his right hand to push his blankets away, he is gripping a torn piece of dark green cloth instead.

He jerks away so badly that he falls out of the bed, staring wide-eyed at the piece of cloth like a child looking at something that comes straight out of his worst nightmares.

Tony remotely sees a blue 2.03 AM on the wall before dashing, half-tripping over his own foot to his lab.

He misses the shredded piece of paper that flies off his bed down to the rugs, black scorch marks of what looks like the arc reactor right in the middle of it.

A/N: What Tony finds in his lab is up to you to decide.