Iron Resolve
A/N: Hey guys, I know I always seem to start my author's notes with an apology, but I'm sorry for the long break in between updates. I've been busy with work recently (I have four jobs at the moment), and admittedly haven't been making the time to write. I've also been spending more and more of my time reading over the last few months, and often I find that when I spend more time reading, I end up spending less time writing (does anyone else do this too?). I'm trying to work on this though and manage my time better between both!
I know that I should be updating my One Time they were Each Worthy story, but I've been having a real block with that one recently, whereas I couldn't get this idea out of my mind, so I thought I'd write it in an attempt to get past the block.
This is just an idea that came to me after watching The Avengers again recently. It's an alternative take on what could have happened if Loki had been successful in taking control over Tony when the two were facing off in Avengers Tower. This will be a two-shot and I'll be posting the second part in the next few days once I've finished the ending. I'm also hoping to post the final chapters of One Time in the next week or two as well (if I can get out of this block!). I hope you enjoy this story and please leave a review to let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: As always, the Avengers are owned by Marvel, I just borrow them occasionally for stories.
~~A~~
Both engineer and trickster faced each other from across the room. It could have just been Tony's imagination, but the air seemed to effervesce with the energy of the impending clash between them. Verbal or physical, Tony wasn't sure. He hoped for the former, but suspected it would be the latter.
The billionaire gripped the glass in his fingers, descending the stairs and keeping eye contact with the cloaked demi-god.
"You're missing the point. There is no throne. There's no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe you're army comes and maybe it's too much for us but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the earth you can be damn sure we'll avenge it."
He took a final drink before lowering the glass and staring defiantly at Loki, who advanced towards him, eyes livid.
"How will your friends have time for me, when they're so busy fighting you?"
He raised the sceptre, its blue light flaring. Tony realised what was about to happen but before he could react, Loki placed the staff against the arc reactor.
For a moment nothing happened, and the genius felt a spark of hope that it wouldn't work on him. Then the sceptre pulsed and tendrils of blue light came flaring out. They seemed to hover in the air for a moment, tantalisingly, before flowing into the arc reactor, and into Tony. He gasped as the foreign power immobilised him and began to surge through his body. He could only stare down at his chest in horror, as more and more of the sceptre's power entered the arc reactor.
Detachedly, he thought the light was quite beautiful as it spider-webbed through his veins, invading through muscle, tendon and bone. Or it would have been, if it weren't trying to poison him. His body shuddered as the light died and the last wisps of power infused his body.
There was a moment of blinding pain, when his blood seemed to boil and the arc reactor burned. Then there was only stillness.
A dislocated sense of calm descended over his mind and he turned to gaze at Loki. The god had an animalistic, self-satisfied smile on his face. Part of Tony want to punch that smile, but that part was rapidly receding, being swept away under a veneer of calm impassiveness as the sceptre took hold.
He felt another consciousness nudge against his own, before forcibly taking control.
"Well", Loki's voice sounded both inside and outside his head, "this is far better than I'd hoped for. To have another of you under my control so soon after the last. And the one who was proving to be most troublesome, no less."
He took a step closer, examining Tony with a smirk.
"I must say, subjugation suits you."
Somewhere within Tony, there was the urge to make a biting retort, but it died before it could come to fruition, buried by the sceptre's control. He was losing his grip on who he was. This thought should have worried him, but it no longer did.
A voice hissed in his mind, willing him to answer Loki's every command. It sounded partly like Loki, part like something other. He knew he shouldn't respond to its orders, but he also knew he was going to.
The cruelty in Loki's smile deepened.
"Call the iron suit to you, and put it on."
Tony's body reacted, while his mind was still too shrouded in fog to do more than watch blandly as he activated each bracelet on his wrist, calling the suit to him.
It came to him as it always did, each piece answering its call to action until he was fully encased.
It should mean something, this armour. It should stand for a different part of his identity. Something vital. Something that brought hope.
But Tony no longer knew what that was.
The visor of his helmet activated and a voice began asking him questions, but the only voice he could hear was Loki's.
"Put the suit into the mode with optimum fighting capabilities," Loki directed, switching the sceptre to his other hand and walking towards the balcony. Tony heard himself instruct the suit to follow the order.
The trickster glanced back at the engineer, eyes calculating.
"When any of your team members or S.H.I.E.L.D arrive, shoot to kill. Spare them no mercies and don't hesitate."
He smiled again then, the expression caught somewhere between vicious ebullience and depravity.
"Your Avengers aren't going to know what's hit them. Pity you won't be able to warn them of what you're about to do. You'll be too busy killing them."
With that, he swept out onto the balcony, cape and helmet forming in his wake. As he paused to bask, a blur of red and silver arrived. Thor.
Thor's voice was booming up from the lower balcony and Loki's was answering him in kind from the upper, but Tony couldn't hear what they were saying. He couldn't hear anything other than the whispers in his mind, commanding him out onto the balcony, to Loki's side. Commanding him to eradicate the enemy.
As he drew closer to Loki, he saw Thor falter.
"Stark?" He questioned, voice uncharacteristically hesitant. "What are you doing?"
A corner of Tony's mind tried to reply, yelled at him to respond, but the rest of him stood motionless.
"I'm afraid," Loki said, his grin feral, "that the Iron Man has had a change of heart."
"What do you mean?" Thor asked, immediately suspicious. "What have you done Loki?"
The god of lies spread his hands magnanimously. "I've always thought actions speak to you louder than words. So let me show you."
He turned to his waiting soldier.
"Disarm the god of thunder and hold him down."
Tony's mind didn't move, but his body did. The suit flew up into the air and sent four quick repulsor blasts down at the blonde Asgardian.
"Stark, what are you doing?!" Thor demanded, deflecting the blasts with Mjolnir.
When no reply was forthcoming he addressed Loki instead.
"What have you done to Stark, Loki?"
The trickster just chuckled mirthlessly as Tony flew in an anticlockwise arc and fired several more blasts.
"I've convinced him he was fighting for the wrong side."
Thor managed to deflect the first two blasts, but Tony had been told to be merciless. The engineer ricocheted the third off the metal of the balcony and it struck the Asgardian in the shoulder, sending him hurtling into the glass barrier at the edge of the roof.
Tony took the opening, speeding through the air towards the thunder god. Part of his mind detachedly registered that this was Thor, Thor. They were comrades, he shouldn't be attacking his teammate like this…should he? His mind felt so heavy. Weighed down with a purpose that was not his own. The more he tried to clear his thoughts, the more forceful the commands became.
Attack him. Take him down. Now.
Tony dropped out of the sky in front of the Asgardian, grabbing him by the throat and throwing him through the glass windows of the tower.
Thor seemed mostly unharmed by the repulsor blasts, despite the setting to kill. This thought floated away like a ribbon on the wind as he flew after Thor, passing through the remains of the glass window where the shards were cascading down, before being blown back up into the air. The effect was something of a glass sandstorm.
A memory flashed into Tony's mind, of a desert and dancing sands, but it escaped as quickly as it had come.
Thor was just getting to his feet, shoulder still smoking from the initial repulsor hit when Tony landed in front of him.
"Stark," he began to reason, "I don't know what Loki has done to you but-".
Tony cut him off with a blast to the head. Thor managed to block with Mjolnir, but Tony was there swinging downwards with a blast to the forearm.
At such close range, the searing heat of the repulsor energy burned straight into Thor's armour. The Asgardian cried out in pain and dropped Mjolnir.
Tony grabbed Thor before he could call for the hammer and flew through the remains of the widow. He purposefully crashed into a steel beam on the way out, forcing Thor to take the brunt of the impact. The metal curved around the Asgardian, eliciting a groan, but not causing any visible damage.
More. The voices whispered. More. More.
Tony dropped them both on the balcony below Loki, landing on top of Thor and pinning him down.
"I don't want to hurt you Stark." Thor said, making a move to break free.
In response, the engineer grabbed Thor's injured shoulder with one hand and poured his power into the hottest repulsor blast possible.
Thor bellowed in agony as the metal shoulder plate melted off his skin. Tony used his other arm to inflict more damage, cracking his elbow plate against Thor's head before using his free repulsor to burn Thor's other arm.
Taking away the Asgardian's ability to summon Mjolnir would give the billionaire the upper hand.
Thor broke free of Tony's grip and grabbed hold of his armguard, squeezing it until it began to bend.
Alarms were flashing on his visor and Thor was yelling something at him, but he couldn't hear anything. Couldn't feel anything.
He freed himself of the thunder god's grasp, seizing him by the throat with one hand and snatching up a long shard of broken window glass with the other.
Seeing what was coming, Thor brought up his armguard to block the blow, but Tony feigned and drove the shard up through his friend's ribcage.
Thor grunted in pain and let go of Tony, hands going immediately to his wounded abdomen. Before he could pull the weapon free, Tony spun behind him and wrenched his arms back into a handcuffed position. He had nothing to keep them in place, save his own strength, so he turned his repulsors on hot and began to burn through the metal, then skin and bone of Thor's wrists.
The Asgardian gasped in surprise and discomfort and, while he was momentarily distracted, Tony swept his feet out from under him and brought him to his knees.
He placed an alloy-encased knee into Thor's back with no small amount of pressure and held him down. Thor began to struggle and Tony drove his knee down harder, forcing Thor closer to the ground and inadvertently driving the shard further into his abdomen.
The Asgardian stifled a gasp and stilled.
"Stark," he began, but stopped as Loki appeared beside them in a whisper. "Loki, stop this now. You can end all of this." There was an edge of pain to his voice.
The god of mischief looked down coolly at his adoptive brother, but instead addressed Tony.
"It seems you can follow orders after all."
He then glanced back down to where Thor knelt.
"I knew one day I'd make you kneel before me." He said coldly, before allowing a smile to curve at the corners of his mouth. "It becomes you far more than I could have imagined."
In one fluid movement, he knelt to Thor's level, grabbing a fist-full of his half-brother's hair in one hand and dragging it back so his neck was taut. With the other hand, he gripped the shard where it was sticking out of Thor's body.
Bringing his face inches from Thor's, he hissed onto Thor's neck, "I am as much a rightful King as you are. But unlike you, I was never wanted as King. I had to fight for what is rightfully mine." He twisted the shard slowly, eliciting a strangled noise from Thor.
"I had to barter for allies, you had them flocking to you. I had to prove myself valuable, you had value thrust upon you." With each emphasis his twisted the shard further until Thor was panting for breath.
Loki loosened his grip on Thor's hair so he could look his half-brother in the eye.
"You told me in the woods to give up this foolish dream. But look around you. Your city is being destroyed because of my power. Does it seem like a foolish dream now?"
"Loki," Thor breathed raggedly, "I only called you…foolish, because I know you're…better than this. You are better, not because of the power you wield… but because of the kindness…I know you are capable of."
Loki flinched backwards ever so slightly, looking like he had been slapped. His expression became almost vulnerable, and for a moment it seemed as though his whole world might cascade in on itself, like a collapsing tower of cards. He looked, for an instant, like he might relinquish his allegiance with the Chitauri and abandon the whole plan. Just an instant. Then it was gone.
"Such vapid sentiment." He hissed and drove the shard of glass the rest of the way into Thor's body.
Thor jerked and began wheezing for breath; it sounded as though the glass had hit a lung. Loki stood back up and watched idly as his half-brother swayed slightly. If it hadn't been for Tony still holding him in place, there was a chance he might have fallen to the ground.
"You always were so unobservant Thor. If you hadn't been so preoccupied with fighting your teammate you might have noticed I enchanted the glass. How else do you think it pierced your armour with such ease?" His eyes flashed dangerously. "And that's not the only thing I enchanted." He looked up to Tony.
"Kill him."
Something in Tony's mind fractured slightly then. He tried to grab hold of his own consciousness, to wrench some semblance of bodily control back from Loki, but it was too late; he was already letting go of Thor and firing up his arc reactor to incinerate his friend.
As he was freed, Thor put one hand on the ground to steady himself and began to call for Mjolnir with the other. But the white hot beam was already charged.
Tony screamed in his mind as he felt the suit begin to release it, saw the golden light from the impending blast reflected in Thor's armour.
And then a blur of red, blue and silver knocked into him and sent him stumbling to the left. The beam released off-target, missing Thor and slicing through the end of the upper balcony, where Loki had earlier been standing.
The metal structure crashed to the floor below, rattling the ground they were all standing on. As everything stilled, Tony could see that the balcony was now little more than a twisted mass of melted metal and carbon fibre.
Thor was staring at it, one hand placed protectively over his wound, but Loki was staring venomously across the balcony at something else. Tony turned to see what had made him stumble and drew a small intake of breath.
Standing at the other side of the floor, shield poised in hand, was Captain America.
This would certainly change things.
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