Yeah, it's Loki alright, that fucking bastard, grinning down on him in arrogance, like Tony is a smudge of dirt on his boot. The ridiculous helmet is gone, but the sceptre is still in his hand, its tip glowing ominously.
"Go to hell," he manages to spit out, not caring about how his usual smart-ass self should be able to think up a witty come-back, because his usual smart-ass self is going to be dead within minutes at the most anyway, and it's going to be that creep standing right next to him who will be doing the honours.
Loki's lips merely curl minutely upwards; whether it's in distaste or amusement or something else, Tony can't tell.
"Not so eloquent, are we?" Loki's smug voice rings out above him. "Though, I suppose that is understandable now that you've been forced to concede your realm to its rightful conqueror."
"You haven't conquered jack shit yet, Rudolph," Tony says, hoping that is the truth, even though he's just guessing here. Maybe those flying creatures and the rest of the Chitauri are already on their way to the neighbouring cities to do with them what they've too effortlessly done to New York. "The Earth is a huge place; New York is just a fraction of it. Don't flatter yourself." He wants to spit in that face, but it's too far away, hovering at a safe distance.
At that, Loki leans down a little, but only a little. "It is merely a matter of time, Stark," he says with a flippant gesture. "The Chitauri are unstoppable, and you've only seen a small part of their forces yet. Earth will not be able to stand against them. Or against me."
The last word is spoken with all the conceitedness of someone who thinks themselves untouchable. Superior.
Tony laughs, though it rings mirthlessly in his ears. "Whatever, Loki. If you keep this up, you're going to be ruling a kingdom of rubble and shit." His chin juts out, indicating the mess around them. "Which, come to think of it, would suit you just perfectly."
Loki merely waves a hand, as if it's of no consequence. "The rest of the humans will surrender quickly enough," he says, sounding almost bored. "Unless they want their cities to suffer the same fate as New York."
And Tony fucking hopes the guy is not right. One city is down or at least well on its way, but there is still a whole world out there that will keep fighting, right?
Right?
Not that he will ever find out, though. He'll be killed by this son of a bitch long before that.
"They'll fight you," he says darkly. "Don't for a second believe anything differently. We've had enough with crazy-ass dictators to last us a life-time to let freaks like you just waltz in and take over."
"We shall see," is Loki's reply, as if he's suddenly bored with the topic, as if it's been exhausted already. Instead, his gaze rakes over Tony, pointedly taking in his situation. An eyebrow shoots upwards, and the grin widens slightly.
"You seem to be… trapped," comes the superfluous comment, no doubt meant as a taunt. A finger goes out to tap against the offending beam, the soft clank of a fingernail against metal surprisingly loud in the silence. "And here I thought the great Iron Man would fare better than getting himself stuck beneath some rubble like a piece of snared prey." He shrugs. "But as has been proven today, you humans are weak and deserve to be ruled, if even your own heroes don't amount to more than this."
The boot nudges him in the ribs again, and Tony growls in anger, wishing he could wipe that self-satisfied smirk off the god's pale face. Preferably by driving a fist into it. Not that Loki would be likely to feel much of it, but whatever.
Automatically, he struggles against the beam again, even though he knows it will be as futile as before. But having Loki standing there at pissing distance has just brought a whole new sense of urgency onto this whole situation. Because now death is suddenly staring him in the face, and despite everything, he really has no particular desire to meet it. And to be honest, he's fucking scared, despite the bravado he's putting on. Getting shot into pieces while in the middle of a battle with adrenaline surging inside of him would be one thing, but lying here helpless and defenceless waiting for his imminent demise at the hands of a maniac with delusions of grandeur is something completely different.
Not that he's going to show Loki any of it, though. The bastard would just delight in it.
"Fuck you," he says, another un-intelligent, un-Tony Stark reply, but he can't bring himself to care right now. He finds his eyes gliding over to the staff still held regally in one of Loki's hands, wondering if the god is going to bludgeon him to death with it, or possibly use it to impale him. Messy, but given that Loki's magic hoopla failed to have any effect on him last time, it seems like the most plausible option.
Death by magic glow-stick of destiny.
Great.
Then, Loki crouches down next to him, and Tony represses a flinch at the sudden nearness. The smell of leather and earth and smoke and something unidentifiable fills his nose, and he clenches his jaw.
"How about I give you some obviously much needed assistance?" Loki says as a vambrace-covered hand reaches out. Before Tony can make sense of what the god is about to do – though strangling him seems like the most probable objective – Loki's fingers are clutching the broken beam weighing down on him. There is a faint screech as metal scrapes over his suit, and a moment later, the pressure on him relents as the beam is – impossibly – lifted and discarded as if it were a toothpick.
It clatters sharply as it lands on top of a pile of rubble to Tony's right, a signpost with something only partly readable sticking out from the side. For a moment, all his brain can do in its confusion is focusing on the black letters – "en's schawar" all he can make out, the rest of it indecipherable.
Then, his attention is sharply brought back to the present nightmare as Loki's voice rings out.
"Take off your suit," the god says. No, scratch that, he orders it. Like a fucking prince who's spent his whole life being obeyed and having fawning subjects eagerly rush forward to fulfil his every command.
"No," Tony grinds out, surprised at how steady his voice is despite the butterflies swirling around inside of his stomach. The situation just took a turn for the unexpected, and it's disturbing him more than he wants to admit. Probably, Loki is planning to kill him in some more creative way rather than just bashing his head in, and he really, really doesn't want to know what that is. At least the suit is still serving some sort of passive protection, even if it can't do anything anymore. It offers him a small, tiny feeling of safety, even now, when death by evil demi-god is literally staring him into the face.
Loki laughs; it is a clipped, barked sound. "No?" he snorts, as if he can't believe what he's just heard. "I do not believe you are in any position to refuse," he continues, the laughter gone from his voice now, the previous amusement having given way to a hardness with sharp edges.
"Forget it," Tony says, turning his head away. He knows he's just being obstinate, because it's not like anything he does matters now, but if he can just make Loki's plans for him a tiny bit harder or more inconvenient to carry through, it's worth it. A final fuck-you he can throw into the face of Earth's wanna-be dictator.
He makes to stand, deciding he will at least die on his feet, but Loki's boot is suddenly on top of his chest, pushing him down and pinning him to the ground as securely as the beam had done mere moments ago.
Tony hisses at the unexpected contact, eyes snapping up to meet with Loki's gaze. The face hovering above his is brimming with anger, eyes narrowed and mouth drawn up into a snarl as the god leans forward, increasing the pressure until Tony can swear he hears metal creaking.
He grabs at the foot, trying to pry it off, despite knowing it's futile already. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the sceptre move in an elegant arc as Loki raises it and then swings it down at Tony's head with full force. With a yelp, he lets go off Loki's ankle, trying to bring up his arms to shield his unguarded face before the staff makes contact.
Fuck!
There is a sharp crack, and he winces, holding his breath as he waits for the inevitable pain to spread, if he's still even alive. But there is nothing, so he slowly lowers his arms, barely daring to move as he peeks out from beneath their feeble protection, his heart pounding a storm in his ears. The butt of the staff is resting what can't be more than an inch from the left side of his face, having smashed into the ground with a disturbingly small margin.
He swallows.
The staff then smacks smartly against what's left of his helmet, clanging sharply in the stillness, bringing his attention back to the god still staring down at him.
"I said, take off you suit," Loki repeats, voice dripping with both coldness and impatience.
This time, Tony grudgingly obeys as the foot on his chest lets up, allowing him to stand up.
He doesn't speak a word as he slowly divests of his armour, doesn't even look at the god in front of him. He's trying to tell himself that it doesn't make a difference, as he fiddles with the locking mechanisms, snapping them open one by one. It's not as if Loki won't be able to pry it all off his dead body anyway, but if he's lucky there might still be some sort of auxiliary power or weapon left in the suit that he can manually discharge in a surprise attack, if only to annoy the god before him even if it won't actually injure him much. Perhaps a heat missile in one of the gauntlets, or whatever.
But there is nothing. It's all dead pieces of metal that he lets fall to the ground, each adding to the sad and pathetic pile of dull red and faded gold before him as he peels off his Iron Man identity until there's nothing left of it.
As he throws the last piece of metal onto the top, standing there in nothing but his jeans and T-shirt, he can't help but feel utterly and totally naked.
Take away your suit, and what are you?
He pushes the thought away, instead raising his eyes to stare Loki defiantly in the eye, not sure he wants to know what's coming next. Sacrifice of puny human to evil demon overlord in gratitude for victory in battle, perhaps?
Loki is staring at him, right at a point where he would have been offended if he were a woman.
"Remove your shirt too," comes the next command, and Tony blanches, taking a step back, full well knowing what Loki is after.
Loki merely narrows his eyes and raises that damn sparkly sceptre of his a little higher. "Don't make me repeat myself again," he says softly enough, but the underlying threat is still there.
And even Tony can see that it would be more dignified to remove his shirt by his own volition than having it ripped off by a fucking maniac while he's on the ground bleeding, so he acquiesces, his movements stiff and taut as he pulls the shirt over his head, jaws set and defiant eyes not leaving Loki's for any longer than the split second it takes for the fabric to be tugged over his head.
"That's better," Loki says with what sounds disturbingly like a purr as he bridges the distance between them with a quick few steps, the hand not clutching the infernal staff reaching out for the glowing circle at Tony's chest.
"So this is your power, then," the god says, his hand splaying across the reactor, almost as if in a perverted kind of reverence. A couple of fingers are resting directly on Tony's skin, and he doesn't like it one bit. He doesn't want Loki to touch him, and even less so the very thing that's keeping him alive. The closeness is making his skin crawl, and as Loki's fingers are circling along the edge of the reactor, occasionally trailing over the skin around it, he takes a step back, not caring how clearly he's making his discomfort known. There are many ways to die, after all, and getting his arc reactor ripped out of his chest doesn't rank very highly on his personal list.
"Yeah, guess what, show's over," he snaps, pulling the shirt back over his head, not giving a shit how much that'll piss the god off. At least getting his skull smashed in with a glow-stick is preferable to the slow agony that will follow a removal of his arc reactor.
To his surprise, Loki doesn't seem angry, or even annoyed, just smug and conceited. And that's a look Tony likes even less on the god.
"Very well," Loki says with a flap of his hand, as if Tony's protest is of no consequence. "I shall study your invention more closely later, at a more convenient time."
He wiggles his staff slightly and Tony can't stop from wincing, expecting the thing to finally crash down on his head, as he prepares to dodge the upcoming blow.
But nothing of the sort happens. Instead, two men, dressed in the disturbingly familiar black of a pair of standard SHIELD uniforms step out of the shadows, their eyes shining with an even more disturbing blue. And Tony wonders if they've been standing there all the time since Loki showed up on the scene, waiting like lapdogs for their master's command.
The god turns to his two mind-slaves, ignoring Tony as if he isn't even there. "Bring the captive along," he says, indicating Tony with a lazy flick of his thumb.
Captive? Tony's eyes widen at that. He definitely didn't see that one coming, and to be frank, he isn't sure whether that's a step up or down from about-to-be-summarily-executed.
Not wasting a second, the two SHIELD agents – no, former SHIELD agents, now – grab hold of Tony's arms, holding them in a vise-like grip. He only struggles for a few moments before realizing the futility of it. Plus, having his shoulders wrenched out of their sockets isn't going to be very conducive to his situation either, or make it easier to make his escape in an unguarded moment. Better to save his strength for later.
The green cape swirls behind the tall, ominous form of the god as he strides past them without as much as a glance, obviously trusting his new employees to handle things from there. Then, he comes to a sudden halt, as if he's forgotten something, turning to Tony and taking in his expression with the raise of a perfectly arched eyebrow.
"No need to look so surprised; I'm sure you're familiar with the saying, 'to the victor go the spoils'," Loki says, his composed voice taking on a harder note as he continues. "And you have just been claimed as spoils of war, Stark."
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