A.N: Set shortly after the end of Ironman 1.
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Loki watches from his perch on the back of the couch as a semi-drunk Tony Stark turns on the flat-screen TV on the wall then sits and pours another glass of scotch.
Tony reaches out a hand to pet him, but Loki hisses and takes a few steps away before sitting down again just as regally as before.
He does not feel guilty when Stark mutters a dejected "figures" and just as dejectedly tells JARVIS to start the documentary, because cat-form or no, Loki can only feel scorn for this mortal who is trying to drown his sorrow in alcohol instead of actively seeking revenge on whoever was responsible.
Confusion takes over as Loki realizes that the sights and sounds are a chronological series of news clips and footage from various functions, and all feature a much happier Tony with an older man named Obadiah Stane standing by his side with all the warmth, support, and paternal pride a father could have. Loki knows Stane is not Stark's father, but from the clips which start with a young Tony, it seems Stane was the closest thing to a father the man had – an adoptive father, in effect, and Loki feels an overwhelming wave of envy rise up.
He never thought he could envy a mortal – never thought that a mortal would have something he did not, and that it would hurt so much, but in this moment, watching another have the fatherly admiration and support he's wanted all his life burns inside him, and he feels a visceral urge to claw Tony's eyes out.
Glancing at the mortal, Loki sees that there unshed tears in Stark's eyes, and he's clutching the glass so tight it might shatter. The thought causes a purr to bubble up in Loki's chest, but Stark does not notice. He only angrily throws the last of the scotch down his throat and glares at the screen, every fiber in his body screaming hurt and bitterness.
Loki turns back to the screen remarking bitterly:
"How pathetic. You had decades with a person who loved you as a father should…. and you're moping because he grew old and died? You should be grateful you had that much – not everyone is that lucky." Of course being a cat it only comes out as a long hiss – which again the mortal misses.
If he stares at the screen long enough, Loki can almost pretend that he is the one receiving Stane's fatherly affection – and that Stark does not exist, so when the bottle of scotch crashes into the screen hard enough to shatter both into a shower of glass and sparks, Loki cannot help but jolt to his feet in shock and try to understand exactly what happened to effect the change in the mortal's mood. The last images were of Stane and Stark at a ceremony for something called an Apogee award, and Stane's expression in the photos was as warm and fatherly as ever – right up until a bottle went flying in his smiling face and the screen shattered.
Now Loki is curious. He loved to pull people's strings and make them react – but here he had done nothing and gotten quite a reaction from the Midgardian. Now he has to know why. Since there were no answers to be found from the documentary, he pads closer to Tony who is sitting forward, body tense with anger and pain.
Suddenly hands are around his chest lifting him from his feet, and Loki unsheathes his claws to deliver a set of scratches to the mortal. Such impudence! Hadn't Loki made it abundantly clear he did not like to be handled?
He freezes mid-swing as Stark regards him with surprising focus for a man several sheets to the wind, and says in a voice rough with emotion:
"He was the closest thing to a father I had – much more of a father than my real one…. When I needed encouragement, someone to believe in me, he was there for me – up until the day he hired terrorists to kill me."
Loki's envy wilts at this new revelation, and perhaps his shock shows even on the cat form, because Tony pulles him a little closer, sandwiching his head against the arc-reactor, one hand making idle circles in his black fur, while he goes on:
"It was not the end of it… I escaped after three months in hell…. came home where he welcomed me with open arms. Turns out he only wanted the arc-reactor, and when he couldn't make his own based on my design, he ripped this one out of my chest and left me to die…"
Loki can hear the mortal's heart hammering in remembered pain and horror, then it calms to a normal rate, and Stark continues, his voice more weary than anything:
"Wasn't the last time he tried to kill me either…. what hurts most in the end is that all these years every emotion he showed me was a lie…. all I ever was to him was his goddamn golden goose….."
Stark falls silent after that last revelation and leans back on the couch, and despite all the envy and scorn he had felt earlier, Loki lets himself follow the man, the thrum of the arc-reactor in the mortal's chest oddly comforting after what he had just learned.
Long minutes later, Tony breaks the silence again, voice bitter and tired but not as hurt:
"Ironic really, in the end I killed him – well, Pepper did actually, but it was my plan….. Still does not take the pain away."
Not long after, Tony's breathing evens out, and he sinks into an exhausted slumber, but Loki finds himself curiously unwilling to leave the mortal's side. While licking his fur back into order, he reflects wryly that he had to update his assessment of Pepper…. yet as the lights in the shop dim, Loki finds himself staring into the glowing blue orb that keeps the man before him from death – and for the first time he realizes that for all his grudges against his own adoptive father Odin, if he had to choose – which thankfully he does not - he'd take the distant and sometimes severe Odin over the warm encouraging and back-stabbing Stane any day.
For the first time he finds himself wondering if revenge on his own family will do anything to make him feel better.
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