Worthy

by Virodeil

What defines "family"? What defines "friend"? What defines "enemy"? – Words are just that, words, and yet people still strive to put meanings to the meaningless, emotions to the emotionless, and action to the actionless. Tony Stark is not an exception to this, and his own meanings, his own emotions, his own actions make everything get complicated, fast, after the Chitauri invasion.

Worthy
By Rey

What defines "family"? What defines "friend"? What defines "enemy"? – Words are just that, words, and yet people still strive to put meanings to the meaningless, emotions to the emotionless, and action to the actionless. Tony Stark is not an exception to this, and his own meanings, his own emotions, his own actions make everything get complicated, fast, after a bunch of outworlders invade his home. If only everything he owns – from his tower to his image – wouldn't be ruined by that…. But then, isn't there always a silver lining amidst the storm clouds?

Story notes:
This story is supposed to be a chaptered thing, if not an epic one. But it has languished in my drive since before Winter's Treasures was posted, and saw crawling progress since it was written. Posting this online, I hope I'll get the inspiration or at least drive to continue it. There are supposed to be at least 5 chapters to this story, but let's just see, shall we?
Here is also to the hope that 2019 will bring better things all round! And my last present for you (maybe) before 2018 ends, too, folks, in case you've got nothing better to do on the New Year's Day like me, and are currently searching for things to read tomorrow,also like me. ;) :D I can only hope that this will entertainyou as it did me! (Although, the stingy and baffling creature that she is, my muse still doesn't have much to say for this story despite her interest in it…. Well, I guess, this can do as a one-shot, too.)

Chapter 1

Tony Stark – engineer, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist – totters and wobbles on his feet inside the battered, semi functioning Iron Man suit.

Quite a damn shame. This should be my hour of glory, right?

Nope. I'm feeling pretty shitty. If this is what Thor meant by "a glorious battle," then I want no part of it, ever, ever again.

My beloved penthouse looks barely recognisable, for one, full of broken walls and broken windows and broken tiles – bloody craters on the floor. And there's a broken body inside one of those. Even if it's Reindeer Games… who threw me out of my own window from the fucking hundredth floor… who mind-controlled people like there's no tomorrow… who wanted to rule earth and opened a portal to freaking outer space in the middle of nowhere for a destroying army instead… who lies there in Loki-shaped crater looking positively dishevelled and wrong-angled and so very small….

Damn. So fucking damn. Why don't I feel delighted? He's the enemy, for tech's sake!

But, and this is for two, I feel so dead exhausted with everything. And the "dead" part isn't truly just figurative, either. I nearly died in the middle of nowhere in total vacuum and I couldn't call Pepper and Jarvis was gone at the last moment and….

"Wha?"

Huh. And now, apparently, the world isn't done with fucking me all to hell yet.

Somebody has just materialised from thin air – without a sound, without any prior visual hint at that – beside the crater that contains Loki, a few metres away: a girl with no big boobs to boast about or maybe a boy with effeminate looks; tall and well-built, but definitely still a young teenager; light-brown eyes, pitch-black hair, vampiric-white skin, light-brown skinsuit adorned with a different crest on each breast….

Cap raises his shield. Agent Legolas raises his knocked bow. Pointbreak raises his sparking huge hammer. Agent Pretender shifts her stance.

I don't raise my repulsor-mounted hands.

Cap glares sidewise at me. But Brucey, seated slumped on the floor beside me, says and does nothing, just staring blankly at our latest uninvited guest, just like me.

I ignore the former, and help the latter to stand, though I nearly fall sprawling on the floor for that.

I just… can't. That… girl's? Boy's? Well, that whoever's skinsuit might double as armour or something, judging from how it glitters ever so slightly like condensed or integrated metal fibre, but they're unarmed, and to say their stance is as deadly as Agent Pretender's in her best pretence would be like saying Tony Stark has the IQ of thirty and the net wealth of twenty bucks and an awesome dad.

I dealt with the military. I dealt with crazy people who tortured folks just for their weapons. I dealt with Agent Calm-As-You-Wish Coulson. And this one is just… not.

I'm not going to raise my weapons against a lost kid, alien or not.

And this tower is mine, no other's, so I'm the King here, and my rule is the only golden rule ever.

So, even though I'd rather eat the shawarma I promised this Timebomb Team and sleep for a year afterwards and forget about all of this, I address the said lost kid in my best salesman tone, "Hello! Lost your way, kid? You shouldn't be here, y'know. It's still a battlefield. Want me to get you to the ground floor?"

The kid, still looking dazed and disoriented, snaps their attention to me.

Eerie.

Those pretty light-brown eyes, they look young, yes, but there's a certain paradoxically old quality there that screams `alien dude here, buddy`, even more than Thor. But even more than that, there's a haunting guilt and sadness and desperation in there that doesn't belong to a teen's look, ever.

I gulp. "Hey, buddy. You with me?"

"I…. I…, no…, I apologise…," the kid stutters, sounding so lost that I expect they'll be physically floundering next.

But they don't. They even manage to pull themself together with the next deep breath, and look somehow humbly princely in the process down to their next words, which are spoken in a mild, cultured tone that nonetheless conceals nothing behind it, including how lost they're feeling: "My apologies, Earth-dweller. I had no intention to intrude in your abode, nor in your battle. I was seeking my kin-sibling, and my Working led me here. I just… failed to find them anywhere, somehow."

Cute.

"Ah." It's me who flounders, unamusingly, though thankfully it's not physically manifested either.

But, before I can ask if they're maybe Loki's sibling, cause they kinda, sorta share some similar features, Cap oh so primly interrupts this perfectly civil, perfectly nice conversation between an awesome engineer and a polite alien, saying in a rather condescending tone that makes my teeth ache, "Where are your parents, son? This is still a battlefield. It's too dangerous for you to be here. Let me escort you down to the ground floor."

Then, with all righteousness, Captain bloody America steps forward, breaking the loose half circle that the Timebomb Team as a whole has been subconsciously maintaining round the insensate, pitiful body of Reindeer Games.

And the alien teen stops him dead with a look.

Granted, if that look were aimed at me, I'd be wary, too. Not the sort of filthy, indignant look teens the world over give their parents or elders or temporary caretakers for disrupting their fun, and neither the haughty `I am a prince so stop me on your peril you mortals` look that Loki and Thor often sport.

No. It's the look that raises my hair on end with its message and how tragically, frighteningly displaced it is on the face of somebody that should still muck about with their pals in junior high.

`I have already been dead for a long time. I can't be deader, so do you want to try me?`

I don't want to; try that look, that is; so I try to wrestle back control of the situation instead. It's my place, anyway.

"What's your name, kid? And what's your… kin-sibling's name? Maybe I can help you? Sorry for Cap over there, by the way. Now he's gonna step back into place and shut up for a while. And that goes for the others, too."

But, instead of the answer from the kid, a mini pandemonium breaks, perpetrated by the Timebomb Team.

"Stark!"
"Man of Iron."
"Not a wise choice, Mister Stark."
"You fuckin' kiddin' us, Stark?!"

"My place, my word," I snap back, without letting my eyes wander away from the kid, who is now visibly tensing for something that might be bad for us or them or all of us. Then, in a milder, semi urgent tone to the alien – now invited guest – standing a few yards away, I pick my earlier words right back up, "So, kid? We don't have much time, sorry to say. Gi'm the name and I'll help you, but tell me yours, too. Unless you want me to call you 'kid' all the time?"

"Names have power, Earth-dweller," the kid says, staring right into my eyes with guarded desperation.

I bob my head. "Heard that," I agree easily. "Won't help any of us in this case, though, huh? So how 'bout this? I'm Tony Stark, or Anthony Edward Stark if you wanna get very, very, very formal, which I hate by the way, and I'm also Iron Man, as you probably can see. Stark International is mine, and this tower belongs to it, so it's mine too. So?"

The kid bows their head rather regally, but their words aren't audible in my physical ears, and start with, `Do not answer me verbally when we are conversing in this way, Earth-dweller. I am honoured with your trust and welcome, and would like to repay you in like manner. However, none of your companions have offered such courtesy to me. If you give me your word that you shall not divulge what I will tell you here to them or anyone else without my permission, I shall tell you my name and more besides.`

"Huh," I mutter dumbly, mind-lagged for once in a very, very long time, and flinch from the unexpected mode of communication. But still, especially with how there's no brain-to-mouth filter to overcome, and it's doubtful anyway – according to so many people – that I've got one in the first place, the requested acknowledgement comes through, in some sort of mental nod that I usually give only to myself and my own achievements and things I think about.

"Tony?" Bruce murmurs in concern, even as he sways on his feet and ends up leaning heavily against my own not-quite-steady self, while applying a death grip on his torn trousers.

"Ah, I'm all right, buddy," I tell him, even as something invisible seems to help prop me up – something with the inexplicable flavour of the kid's fucking real telepathic words. Then, maybe on a whim, or maybe I'm feeling generous and want to share the privelege of the experience, or maybe pushed by something else that I don't want to think about, I continue with, "Wanna introduce yourself to our guest, brucey?"

It's my science bro's time to let out a stupid, "Huh." But to his credit, he recovers in seconds despite his no-doubt lingering wooziness from the extended Hulk times, straightens up a little, and does introduce himself, slurring out, "Am Bruce, Bruce Banner. Scientist. Doctor, Nuclear Physics 'n' Biotechnology. Medical doctor by necessity… 'n' half a choice. Hope you won't ever meet the Monster; my failed s'periment, that. Calls 'mself Hulk."

The gaze of the alien kid, now trained on Brucey, is shrewd and contemplative. I tense up a little, for a reason I don't know – or maybe I just don't want to contemplate it. But thankfully, the kid just gives my science bro the same regal head-bow that they gave me.

Judging from how Brucey jerks a little on his place glued to my side, he's just gotten the same mental experience following that, too.

And then, the kid fulfils their bargain, with a lack of mental composure, similar to their prior interaction with me, despite their calm physical bearing.

It results in a hell of a foreign emotional rollercoaster.

`My dam named me Býleistr.` Wistful ambiguity. `My sire and nurser called me Leí.` Desperate yearning. `I am the second child of the late Monarch-Consort and General Farbauti of Ýmirheim.` Pride and wariness. `I came here seeking my surviving kin-sibling, younger than I am by a thousand years.` Horrible, crushing guilt, held quietly and faithfully for so long. `I displaced them at the end of the war in the temple just inside the palace's grounds.` The same guilt, the same desperate yearning, now flavoured with self-disgust and long-born sensation of uncleanness. `I heard the children were to be named Loptr and Loki.` Envy for a coveted position, adding to the guilt and desperation and uncleanness. `I do not know what name my kin-sibling took afterwards, given by whoever bore them away from the temple, but I know they are still alive and can be located in this very place.` Loss; longing to make it up to an unknown but long-thought-of family member; fear of utter rejection by the said family member; resignation to being struck dead by the said family member later on in vengeance. `One thousand two hundred and ninety four years old. They are still a child, if not so little anymore….` Grief and guilt on witnessing an adored parent's long-held sorrow; deep regret on so much lost time unrecoverable; faithful determination to make it all right again. `I beg of you, Anthony Edward Stark and Bruce Banner, as a kin-sibling of the child and a nursling of the child's dam: Please assist me in finding the child and returning them to their dam.` Solemn vow to make it all right again. `My sire, the Monarch of Ýmirheim, will no doubt reward you well for the return of one of their womb-children.` The desperate yearning again, tinged heavily with desolation and resignation for an expected reward of death. `They will have one of the twins in their arms, in the least, if never the pair anymore, for the unforgivable deed that I and my womb-sibling committed on that day.`

I reel back, so does Brucey, but the invisible force from earlier easily keeps us upright.

The invisible prop is bloody useful next, as flitting glimpses of a battle between aliens – `So blue and so huge! And where did those bulky, blondy, beardy medieval humans come from?` – appear, followed directly by a brief look at a blue-alien, deep-voiced… mum? Dad? Mum-dad?… with roundish belly straining and sobbing painfully and weakly in labour, with the bonus of copious amounts of silver-blue, blue-black blood and other things spilling between… her? Him? Their?… shaking legs – `Damn. The plight of mothers everywhere in the universe, apparently. Poor darling mom.` – and ending with an all too vivid and lingering image of a little – `Still bloody!` – clear-blue-skinned, solid-red-eyed baby alien crying its newborn lungs out on a stone table, barely wrapped in a measly piece of torn, coarse fabric and set beside a blue glowy box.

"Oh damn. I need time, kid," I croak out, once I've recovered slightly. "Don't dump in all the info at once! You're making me age a decade with all that, n'I'm no longer an awesome teensy teen to begin with."

Ironically, no actual time seems to have passed since the second this little dude with so much baggage began with their metaphisical PowerPoint presentation, judging from the puzzled looks the others throw me and Brucey for the no-doubt quick and inexplicable changes to our demeanours, or maybe just for my latest comment and Brucey's grunted agreement to that. But still, it's the thought that counts.

And now…, "Man of Iron?" Thor rumbles inquiringly, but with an edge of suspicion and wariness that I don't like.

I shake my head, still looking at the outwardly calm kid across the Loki crater. "Later, Thor. – Erh, kid? Can I call you Bee? – Well all right all right, not Bee then. Bob? Well, Bob, so you put your lil sib out of the way in a temple during the end of your war? And they weren't there anymore when you came back for them?"

The kid, having acted like a shocked, scolded cat when I called them Bee, gives the recap a short, approving hum-grunt, which may be their kind's way of giving a stiff nod. So I continue, after sparing a glance to the Loki crater between us, whose occupant is stirring and groaning a little: "They're a thousand two hundred ninety four, huh? That's definitely not a kid, over here; it's a fossil. Thor, s'that age still a kid in your place?"

"I do not know what is the meaning of 'kid' that you refer to, Man of Iron, but somebody of that age is no longer a child, if not quite an adult yet," the addressee proclaims tensely, sharply. "And that is my brother's age."

"Damn," Brucey murmurs from beside me, and I barely restrain myself from nodding along to his implied assessment.

Thor has an adoptive brother, the same age as "Bob's" supposed kiddy baby sibling. The bag of cats that's Thor's brother is lying there whimpering between me and Bob, and his name is Loki, one of the two names that Bob offered for that lost sibling.

Eerie.

But convenient.

Elementary assessment, too. It doesn't need two geniuses to achieve such a conclusion.

Even the act-first-ask-much-later Thor has noticed, apparently, and now got possessive over his not-so-wanted, shameful, criminal brother he'd like to cart back to Asgard for judgement as soon as possible. It just needs one itty bitty spark from somewhere or someone to ignite the air simmering between Bob and him, over Loki.

Not good.

And now Agent Legolas is shifting his stance as well, following Agent Pretender, and growling like a tiger about to pounce.

Even more not good. Enough intergalactic altercations with alien nobles already! Bob's acknowledgement of their nobility was convoluted as hell, not to mention unfamiliar, but there's no doubt they're a prince, or maybe an equivalent of it in a culture that seems to acknowledge only a single, neutral gender, and two alien princes have wrecked two separate places already on earth – three, if counting the two that Loki wrecked separately. So, "Whoa! Hold your fire, Legolas. We don't wanna have more problems here, do we?"

But, while Agent Legolas freezes up just before he's loosing his arrow, Thor doesn't.

"What manner of trickery is this?" he rumbles and raises up his sparking huge hammer, and it's my turn to shift, especially when he continues with, "Who are you to claim my brother as yours? Show your true skin, jötun! If you want a battle, I shall give you one!"

I really, really don't like it. It sounds too much like what a bully would say to a persecuted someone. Just replace "jötun" with "negro" or whatever and "battle" with "fight" and you'll get a familiar result.

I've got lots of faults, but an intentional, unprovoked, racist bully isn't one of those.

"Whoa! Pointbreak, wait up. Who says anything about battle? The battle's done. We just need to clean up."

And, maybe stupidly, though I certainly don't have a death wish, I clank over to his place, toting a hobbling Brucey behind me because this science bro of mine is still stubbornly attached to my battered armour.

"Let's talk about this civilly, yeah?"

The thunderous look on Thor's face – no kidding! – is not a good sign for any kind of talk, though.

And the words he spews forth right afterwards, too: "This is not a Midgardian matter, Man of Iron. Do not meddle in the affairs of a prince of Asgard."

And he raises his hammer higher, as if about to throw it across the crater to bash Bob flat.

Why, oh why hasn't the kid noticed Reindeer Games yet? We've established that he might very well be Bob's not-so-kiddy bbaby sib!

And now Brucey is growling from behind me; as in, Hulk-growling, and I doubt he'll survive a third shift into his alter ego in the same day.

And I'm not about to lose my new science bro.

I want to give poor Bob a chance, too, despite it being with the bag of cats the Timebomb Team has spent a few days battling against, including just now.

I don't like being talked down to arrogantly by an alien, either. My disastrous bar encounter with Loki, case in point. No different with his adoptive big bro. – And where did the sudden brotherly possessiveness come from? Thor never acted brotherly to Loki prior to this, and in fact bloody blamed the adoption when Agent Pretender accused the latter of killing eighty people in two days!

"This is earth's matter, too, yeah all right. It's here, after all, and you are in my tower," I snap back, glaring at Pointbreak, before deliberately turning my back on him and shifting Brucey to stand before me, so I stand between him and that blue hammer on steroids. "Now, kid," I address the petrified teen across the Loki crater, "don't just stand there. Look down before you and just see. Could that be your lil sib? His name's Loki. Not so lil anymore, though. Can help you do a DNA test after this, if you want. Got the equipment downstairs. Got so many paternity suits that–."

…I never get to finish my rambling.

There's a huge bang, and a painful ringing, and high-pitched yelps of two voices, and a loud growl, and I'm flying not on my own volition, for the second time already in as many hours; now cleanly across the Loki crater instead of down the tower, but still!

I can't move anywhere for a long, long moment. I can't even breathe, pressed down and in by my own Iron Man armour.

But Hulk is growling through Brucey, and bones are beginning to shift loudly there, and Agent Pretender is pleading to and cajoling the green rage monster not to take over for Brucey's health's sake, and she is failing miserably again, so I must do something, anything, for the sake of my science bro's life.

He's been thrown right alongside me, and we're now sprawled on my poor broken floor on the other side of the Loki crater, so it's only a matter of reaching out – weakly, but still – to grasp his ankle with my left hand.

"Hulky, come on, buddy, don't do this to Brucey. We've got this. No need to come out," I force out through my breathlessness, uncaring of how squeaky I sound, uncaring of the grappling sounds across the crater that might mean Cap and Thor are fighting, uncaring of how the other two – those fucking SHIELD agents – are faring, or the state of my poor, further-decimated penthouse for that matter.

"Buddy, look at me?" I wheeze pleadingly, tugging at the ankle – that's getting bigger and getting greener.

And the body does.

And the eyes are green, angry – intelligently angry – but not for himself.

"Tony hurt," the throat rumbles, in a voice that's not so Brucey anymore; and the face that's now big and also not so Brucey anymore scowls… kinda cutely.

I give the semi-Hulk my warmest, most encouraging smile. "Tony will get better soon. Help me up?"

He does; help me up, that is; and now we're seated side by side on the floor like a pair of knackered, dumbfounded schoolboys gawking at the result of their latest exploded chemistry set, facing the rest of the ruined hall as we are.

Bob is kneeling beside the crater now, at long last, although they look like they still can't directly see into a cornered-looking Loki's face, for some reason. Or maybe they just can't recognise the battered dude despite the huge name-dropping earlier plus the argument.

Agent Legolas is trying to pack up the Tesseract and Loki's staff, now, along with Agent Pretender and Erik Selvig.

They're ignoring how Thor is now fighting all out with Cap, hammer and shield in play, with Thor demanding Cap to cease fighting so he can batter "the lying, thieving jötun" with his hammer, and Cap going on with his determined denial like a tenacious golden retriever.

So much for teamwork.

Well, then again, I don't play well with people.

"Come on, Brucey, I need your help. Promised Bob I'd help them," I murmur, while nudging the quivering body beside me gently with one shoulder. "DNA test, and then we'll decide what to do next. Two floors below should do for a base camp, I think, to avoid the collapse of this one. Help me move Reindeer Games there?"

I move when, not so trembly anymore, Brucey – who is no longer so Hulky – moves.

"Here's Loki, Bob," I tell the kid once Brucey and I manage to crawl to the lip of the Loki crater. "Can't you see? He's looking at you." And Loki is, but there's something wrong – or maybe just different – in his glassy eyes that makes me uneasy; not the facing-a-dangerous-madman sort of uneasy, at that, which makes it even more unsettling.

I wish I could speak mind to mind to Brucey. But as it is, I look sidewise at that science bro of mine and ask bluntly, "Brucy, look at Reindeer Games' eyes. Do you see anything different? Or is it just me being paranoid?"

The green-tinged brown eyes look back at me, firstly without comprehension, but then with burgeoning interest and alarm.

Brucey looks, and sniffs, and looks back at me with mostly green eyes.

"Green eyes," he reports quietly, intensely, with his voice back at a growling point, just as I take Bob's hand and place it blindly on Loki's shoulder. "They were blue, like Agent Barton's and Mister Selvig's."

Like the two mind-controlled dudes that Loki himself mind-controlled.

So who is actually the puppet master?

We've been played so masterfully by whoever that is.

Double fuck. Triple damn.

I look back down at my hand, which is still holding Bob's over Loki's shoulder, then trace it to the battered face of a now unreadable-looking Reindeer Games.

"I still don't like you much," I tell him. "But I don't like the idea of jailing the wrong person even more."

From my other side, Bob is murmuring feverishly in an unknown language, while looking down intently – but still rather unseeingly – at a particular spot on Rock of Ages' double-elbowed arm. The sight of the thorough break makes me sick, so I look away, now at Brucey, who is gently touching various spots on Loki's face, neck and shoulders.

"Can we move 'm 'way soon? I don't like the looks of things, bro," I murmur to him, tensing just as Thor manages to toss Cap away yet again.

"He can be moved. But I am not strong enough to move him without inciting more trauma and pain," is the sardonic answer, so I turn to Bob.

Before I can say anything to the kid, though, Thor rushes up to us with hammer raised, no longer encumbered by Cap, and the aforementioned kid notices him like they haven't managed to notice Loki all this time.

I won't forget the blood-curdling scream they let out any time soon.

Utter fear. Desolate rage. – Nope, not the scream of a teenager, at all.

Bob throws themself into the crater, on top of a yelping Loki. I have time just enough to note that they're still shorter than Reindeer Games despite the purported elder age, before ice grows all over the two of them, sealing them in what's essentially a transparent coffin.

And then the hammer smites down, hard, over the ice, over Bob's otherwise unprotected back, and it develops huge cracks right away.

Bits of ice rain down on me and Brucey. I can't help remembering the silver-blue blood spraying in those alien wartime clips Bob shared with us, and the silver-blue, blue-black blood and other liquidy stuffs coming out of the giant blue mum, and thinking, `Damn. It could've so easily been Bob's blood right there, and maybe even their bones.`

I open my mouth – to yell at Thor, or maybe at Cap who is painfully trying to stand on the other side of this wrecked floor, or maybe at Agent Legolas who is gaping like an idiot beside a still-dazed Selvig on yet another side of the floor, or at Agent Pretender who is blithely texting somebody near them. But Brucey – or rather, Hulk-and-Bruce – is faster.

The body shared by those two lunges across the reknitting ice, half transformed, with a roar that's very much Hulk but at Brucey's decibel.

And it's thrown aside like so much rubbish, halfway across to where the SHIELD agents and Selvig are.

It doesn't rise up again. Neither as Brucey nor as Hulky.

I see red, almost literally.

"THOR!" I give my own bellow…

…Which turns out to be pathetically squeaky, given how it's so hard even to just breathe in the first place.

Oh well, at least I can still vent against this berserker who has taken over my supposed teammate's body. Silver lining and all.

Now, for the real stuff…. Some good old stoning ought to do it, using the debris littered all round me. "That huge ice cube isn't an anvil, buddy!" I holler to him, meanwhile. "Stop hitting it!"

I have to duck each time, hard and fast, from all the debris thrown back at me, charged with crackling electricity. Good old desperate tenacity – read as idiocy, perhaps, or even lunacy – is the only thing that keeps me going.

And still, without skipping a beat, the hammer falls on the ice mercilessly, which reknits slower and even slower than each previous instance.

Cap is dragging his sorry self along with his semi-smoky shield to us, but it's too damn slow.

Agent Pretender is at last moving, throwing various pointy things at the Berserker. But all those pointy things fall charged and smoking on the floor just before hitting him.

Agent Legolas' explosive arrow ends up as friendly fire, throwing a painstakingly crawling Cap back while just staggering the Berserker a teensy bit.

My repulsor blasts don't even move him, though I've got to be thankful that I don't get thrown back like Capcicle. Don't have Supersoldier Serum, here!

And then, Agent Pretender has the bright idea to tase an electrically charged alien, just as the surface of the huge ice cube cracks and doesn't knit back up.

The hammer on steroids glows, just as it hits the ice cube for the umpteenth time, and jagged lines of blue and purple and white and red electricity dart everywhere inside of it.

I hope – I really, truly, desperately hope – that the twitches and jerks I see on the bodies inside the ice cube are just the result of my imagination and eyesight gone haywire.

But just in case they aren't….

I stare into Agent Pretender's eyes, shake my head, glare at the taser.

She nods.

She fishes out a small handgun from somewhere, then fits two incongruously big, fat bullets into it.

And then she fires, twice: once at the berserker's temple and the other at his back.

She's repaid with the Berserker's total attention, madder than before, with shallow-looking, bleeding holes on the side of his cranium and – maybe – down his ribs.

It's the first time I hear her genuinely scream in fear, however short the scream is, and I find I don't want to hear that again.

Agent Badarse Girl ought not to be that frightened.

I leave Agent Legolas chasing after the Berserker, who is in turn barrelling after Agent Pretender, and try to figure out how to break apart the ice cube without hurting Bob and their maybe sibling even more.

I try knocking politely at the most intact bit of the ice cube, first. "Hey, Bob? Come out, please? We can go downstairs before anybody sees."

The ice cube, now badly cracked everywhere, collapses into powder in response. But I can't cheer on the success of getting rid of it in a way, looking at and listening to what the Berserker has done to the two inside.

Still draped over Rock of Ages, Bob is convulsing indeed, and whining and whimpering desperately like a very small kid wailing for their mummy or daddy. It's all one word – "api," or maybe "abi," or maybe "abyeh" – and they speak it like a prayer for salvation.

And Reindeer Games….

I didn't appreciate how sane he looked, all throughout our forced acquaintanceship, or how there he was, in comparison to… this.

That bruised, bloody face is twisted up into something worse than a grimace or a snarl, with how bloody the teeth and lips and tongue and eyes and ears are. Also, those glassy eyes are just… glassy, although not in death – not yet, perhaps.

"Hey, Reindeer Games? Loki? Not-buddy?" I pat softly but rapidly at the unmoving shoulder, hoping I'm not making some hidden bruise or gash or break worse by doing so – but where else can I nudge him that's not covered by Bob or a visible injury? "M'on. Don't leave yet. You've got to confirm for Bob first, at least. They went all the way from that wherever place to reconnect with you, y'know. You're one lucky bastard… and I mean that figuratively, of course."

And then, I hear the crunch of bones from somewhere far away, and Agent Pretender's wail, and Agent Legolas' howl, and my mind blanks out for a moment.

Now I know what people refer to by a human's hindbrain – primal instinct, lizard's brain, whatever.

Yeah, we're all still apes at heart. – Survival first, survival of the fittest, and all that crap.

Now I believe those vids where mums got cars outa their kids' bodies and all, too, 'cause, somehow, I've done it.

I don't know when I moved, how I moved, how I managed to move all these injured people including myself, but I've done it.

It's the eightieth level of the tower now, and I'm slumped half upright beside the elevator, sans my half-useless armour and holding a twitchy and delirious Bob in my arms. Reindeer Games is lying sprawled on the floor beside me, unmoving and staring vacantly, while an equally unmoving but close-eyed Brucey is lying half curled into himself at our feet. Cap and Selvig and the two SHIELD agents are seated in equal disarray across the narrow front hallway, and for a long moment we just exchange dazed, wide-eyed looks.

There's a limit even to the seasoned spies, it seems, and to my runny mouth as well.

Agent Pretender twitches – and lets out a tiny rabbit-like whimper – when a faint crash sounds far overhead. The twitch is shared by Bob, who is still lying in my arms, who is still whimpering shamelessly perhaps for their daddy or mummy.

Cap's eyes meet mine.

"We should… move," he whispers.

I stare pointedly at him, too exhausted even to raise an eyebrow.

"Where…." He goes glassy-eyed for a moment, but then seems to shake himself awake internally. "Where's the medical section? Do you… do you have that here?"

I give him a short hum-grunt, imitating Bob from earlier, too tired to nod.

And then the crashes sound more often, and closer.

"Let's… let's just go. Let's try," I slur out. "We… can't stay here. I…."

Erh, what should I say next?

What did I just say, for that matter?

The world feels so far away….

Something seems to touch my shoulder. I give my eyes a blink.

But no, my eyes are shut. Of course they can't blink. Did I… fall asleep? Unconscious? Did I just faint? Without knowing that I had the pleasure of imbibing copious amounts of alcohol prior to that?

"M'wake," I mumble under my hitchy breath, past the sluggishness of my brain, past the horrible pain on my chest, past the twitchy burden still draped against my front.

"Good," Cap's voice laughs a little – raggedly, completely mirthlessly, from inches away near my left shoulder. "The crashes… they're getting closer, Mister Stark, and I can… I can hear him screaming for cowards and something else to come out and face him, still; little faint, but still…," he continues, in a rambling, unsteady tone alien to my ears. "The tower's shaking, can't you feel that? And rain's pouring by the bucket outside, too, I saw… saw that. Wind and thunder and all." His hand tightens slightly on my shoulder, and it trembles. "We're trapped, either way, unless there's a safe escape tunnel or something out… outa here. You know this place best. What do we do?"

A part of me wants to tease him about ceding control to an unworthy soul or something like that. But, thankfully for us all, I guess, I feel too beaten up – figuratively and literally – to make any quip and toss it to him.

I loll my head away from him, then address the thin air, with my eyes still closed, "Jarvis? Jay? You there, buddy?"

"I am, sir," comes the answer, in the mild British manner I programmed my best baby that long time ago. But now there's some definite tenseness in there that I never even dreamt of programming, and it makes my figurative hackles rise.

"What's up, buddy?" I urge him. "What's the status? Get the bots here to help everyone go downstairs while you're at it. I want us all safe in the next five mins or so, including you."

He obliges me, on both counts.

And my eyes pop open in sheer terror and astonishment when, after the boring parts of the status report – such as weather outside of the tower – have been recited, he proceeds to say, "The highest twelve levels have collapsed to the storeys below them, sir, at least partially. The collapser has been making a ragged tunnel to the lower levels with the electricity-generating hammer he wields. Unfortunately, I cannot provide you a more in-depth assessment of the damage and the detailed actions of the collapser. I had only rough glimpses of what was occurring instead of full recordings, due to the chaotic electric and magnetic fields the hammer generated, before my connection was cut out completely by eighty-nine-point-five-percent overload and ten-point-five-percent physical damage. The collapser is currently on the eighty-seventh level and working down towards the eighty-sixth, sir. Given the situation, I have taken the liberty to enact nuclear protocol for surveillance and defence purposes on all the intact lower levels, aboveground as well as underground. Do you wish to override it, sir?"

"No no no," I manage to squeak out, just as Cap butts in, tense and wild-eyed, "I'm sorry, but who and where are you?"

"It's… it's Jarvis," I ramble, even as my mind galvanises itself to think, think think think. "He's my bot, my AI, my electronic butler, my surveillance and defence system and advisor, my workshop assistant…." `…My only constant friend, the last remaining bit of my family, my stupid sentimental attempt to revive my first ever – and never a betrayer – father figure….` "He got eyes and ears wherever I am. No worries, Capcicle. You're safe with him around."

"Pleased to meet you, Captain Rodgers," Jarvis pipes in, still rather nervy. "I assure you, I mean no harm to you, as long as you do not mean harm to Sir and those he gives protection to."

Cap's eyes meet mine, but he's the one who looks away.

The tower shakes – again, maybe, if Cap's claim is true. More crashes follow.

Agent Legolas' eyes meet mine, now, stormy blue instead of electric blue. Then he looks meaningfully to the side, beyond where he and Agent Pretender rest their bottoms, to where the blue cube and fancy stick-spear have been discarded.

Their blue lights are brightening and dimming in tandem, like a pair of in-sync hearts.

Damn. Crap. Fuck. Hell.

"Damn mind-control things," I manage to get out.

"So you think Thor is mind-controlled by any – or both – of those?" Agent Legolas' eyes are hooded, now; hooded but piercing in a way.

"No." It's Agent Pretender who pipes up instead, from beside him, her voice thready and struggling to sound calm, matter-of-fact. "He's… similar, to Doctor Banner's alter ego. He… he liked it." Her voice hitches. "He…. I don't think he recognised me, when he chased me around your penthouse, Mister Stark."

My chest clenches in empathy, but also burns with offence.

I catch her eyes and hold them fast.

"No," I tell her quietly, fiercely, matter-of-factly. "You're wrong. Hulk knows me. How'd he catch and revive me otherwise?"

She looks away.

I look away, as well, feeling somehow guilty.

Given that, I'm terribly relieved when the elevator doors open and my bots pour out, from the largest to the smallest. I direct my two Iron Man armour helpers to get Brucey and Agent Pretender downstairs. But since the latter demurs, I fill the slot with the – probably dead – Reindeer Games.

Well, I hope otherwise, really, somehow; that Loki's not dead, that is.

I don't want to think too badly of Thor, despite everything, and Bob's yet to have a chance with their probable, not-so-kiddy lil sib, and I'm yet to get to the bottom of this mind-control business, too, so Reindeer Games had better stay alive.

And speaking of mind control….

"Dum-E, You, fetch two of the strongest containment boxes from Brucey's to-be lab. Overlap them into two sets if you manage to find those in different sizes. Follow Jarvis' instructions, buddies, don't dawdle, and be good about it. It's not playtime yet."

Butterfingers is already helping Agent Pretender totter along to the lift, with Agent Legolas on her other side. They vanish into it when the doors open again, spitting out my huge assistants sans their previous burdens.

"Did you put Bruce and Loki in our nuclear bunker, big buddies?" I ask the large, sadly yet-unnamed bots, as I help Cap get a spasmy, clingy Bob into the arms of one of them. On their beeped affirmations, I order them to add to the stock of medical and survival necessities in the bunker after delivering Bob there. "No worries about me, buddies," I insist, as the remaining free bot tries to usher me into his arms. "I'm going down with Cap and our booties. Just go and prepare everything, 'kay? Remember, all medical and survival kits, as long as nobody else is using those. Food and water are included, by the way. Just follow Jarvis, 'kay?"

They go away.

The tower shakes again.

The crashes get nearer.

"The collapser is on the eighty-fourth level now, sir," is Jarvis' tense report when I request it of him.

Cap and I look at each other, with the two fuck-to-hell pieces of alien tech sitting on the space between us – now dim, now bright, now in-between.

He looks so young.

He looks hurt, betrayed, helpless.

I look away.

I forgot that, however sainted and awesome Dad made him to be, he's after all just someone fresh into full adulthood.

Dum-E and You choose a very, very good time to appear, shooting out of the elevator doors, each clutching one of my special boxes in their pincer arms.

"M'on, Cap," I murmur to the other flesh-and-blood sentient in the room, when my two bots are done with the cube and the sceptre. "Let's go down to the bunker. We've got high-tech stretchers there, too. We can get out via my secret way if worse comes to worst."

I never look at him again, even once, even when we're crowded inside the shaking, creaking metal box, shooting down the shaft under the cables' doubtful mercy, on the way to a questionable shelter.