Thor came to the end of his prison once again, the edge of the tarnished mirror that he had arbitrarily named as demarcating the boundary of the round, featureless walls, and began again.
He was no longer pacing, driving himself from wall to wall in a furious explosion of nervous energy. Now he moved with more purpose, more patience, examining every single nook and cranny in his prison in search of some flaw, some weakness. He had been over every inch of the walls, ceiling and floor, every tiny and minute detail of the sparse furniture looking for some clue, some weakness, some chink in the armor that held him in.
It had become increasingly clear as hours turned into days that no search party was coming to rescue him. On some unspoken, unexamined level, Thor had expected that someone would by now. He'd been certain that Loki would reveal himself before too long, whether he was found out or if he discarded his own pretense in pursuit of whatever diabolical plan he was after this time. Once Loki was found out, the search would be on for the real Thor, and it wouldn't be too long before they traced him here.
But no one had come. Thor wasn't sure why they had not; perhaps Loki gone into hiding somewhere else, to further plot and prepare for his schemes, rather than revealing himself. Perhaps they were searching even now, but for some reason could not track him here. Perhaps - it frightened him to even entertain the thought, but he must - perhaps Loki had managed to overcome all of the other Avengers, leaving no one left to find him. Even that hypothesis supposed, however, that Loki could somehow manage to overcome or trick all of Asgard in addition to the mightiest warriors of Midgard, and that Thor just could not believe.
Almost more frightening than the thought of all his friends lying dead was the insidious, irrational fear that no one had found him simply because no one had bothered to look. It had no basis in reality, Thor was sure. As crown prince of Asgard and member of the Avengers, Thor was simply too important to be ignored. Yet as the cold grey days crept forward without measurable change or release, it rose in the foundations of his mind like icy floodwaters swirling around a dark cellar.
Thor was not accustomed to being alone. Oh, he had the same need for privacy as any man, but it was always with the understanding that others would come immediately to his side should he need them - servants, warriors, friends. Family. He'd gone on a few quests alone and reveled in the feeling of independence and self-sufficiency; yet it was a far cry from choosing to be by himself for a while, to being cut off from everyone he'd ever known and cared about. From knowing that he couldn't reach out to others for help - or that even if he did, they might not bother to come. Or care. From knowing that he might die here, alone and far from the light and air, and that no one in the universe would even miss him, would even care.
He wondered if this was how Loki felt all the time.
Thor had been aware of his brother's solitude, often self-inflicted - he could be terribly unpleasant when he wanted to, and tended to drive off others with his fits of temper even before he'd gone mad. He'd always assumed that Loki simply liked to be alone and did not care for the company of others. But there was a difference between knowing it and living it, being surrounded in it, immersed in it. It ate away at his courage and fortitude, poisoned his soul with doubts and increasingly bizarre turns of thoughts. It was not all right for Loki to be so alone. It made him worse.
To be sure, Thor had always tried more than others to be company for his brother, to ground and stabilize him. Yet in this solitude and silence he admitted to himself that he had not always tried all that hard. Nowadays, he really only paid attention to Loki when his brother was making some kind of trouble that could not be ignored, or when Thor needed him for something. The rest of the time, he simply had too much to do - battles to fight, duties to attend, mortals to protect - to spare a thought for how Loki was doing.
All his thoughts were for Loki now, anyway. He wondered what Loki was doing constantly, endlessly, compulsively, with a mixture of anxious fear and resentful fury. He found himself filling the long empty hours fantasizing about what he would do when he got free, what sort of a lesson he would teach his incorrigible brother.
Truly, he and Loki had changed seats.
So he searched the cell, again and again, because it was better than lingering in his own thoughts. He must try, even if the results proved fruitless. It was the only thing left for him to do.
He wished that his friends were here, and not only to relieve the creeping, gnawing loneliness. Thor couldn't help but feel that almost anyone else would have been more suited to finding a way out of this trap than him. The Hulk could simply have smashed his way out; his elemental strength did not tired, no matter how many tons of rock stood in his path. Tony Stark probably would have engineered some crude but clever communications device out of a mirror and a chair leg. Loki... well, Loki would have magicked his way out of the trap days ago; Loki probably could have thought of a hundred ways to get out even without using his magic at all.
Loki had Thor's body, his strength; Thor was left with only his brother's lesser portion of that. He had Loki's magic, but he could not use it; he had not Loki's learning. Nor his wits. That was what was needed here, above all; this was not a trap that could be smashed free. It could only be escaped by cleverness; and Loki was so much more clever than Thor, how could Thor ever hope to find an weakness that Loki had not already thought ahead and blocked? Loki was so paranoid, so meticulously over-prepared - what angle could he possibly have overlooked?
And beneath that, the ever-gnawing fear: even if he escaped, would there be anything left of his friends to return to?
Steve was halfway through Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (a book Bruce had recommended to him, which was explaining a lot of weird things about the twenty-first century) when Thor's voice boomed around him, jarring him out of his reverie. Ever since he'd gotten the super-serum, his startle reflex had turned up to 11. "Farewell, friend Steve!" Thor boomed. "We are off for a night of carousing and revelry!"
"Wait, what?" Steve stuck his head around the door. Tony smiled back at him and waggled one hand, dressed up in an eye-searingly glitzy suit and pair of sunglasses. "You're going where now?"
"Vegas, Steve baby, Vegas," Tony called back. "Did you ever make it out to Las Vegas before?"
"Uh, no," Steve said. It had been on the itinerary for a future USO tour - after the fateful England one - but things hadn't turned out that way, obviously.
"You should go sometime. It's a real party town. Only place in the US where prostitution is legal. Did they have that back in the 40s? Gambling too - well, not counting the reservation casinos. Anyway, it's a hell of a show."
"Care to accompany us?" Thor asked brightly, and Steve goggled.
"Uh - no," Steve stuttered. "That doesn't really, um, sound like my scene. I don't - I don't really do gambling."
"You sure? It's a lot of fun even if you don't gamble," Tony said. "Free shows, not-free shows, the Cirque du Soleil, Blue Man Group, the Lion King... plus girls, girls and booze, girls with booze. Boys too, if you're into that sort of thing, there's the Chippendales and Thunder Down Under -"
"Thanks," Steve said firmly, cutting off this litany of entertainments, "but no thanks, I'll stay home this time. Maybe some other time."
"Suit yourself, Boy Scout," Tony said, and headed out towards the elevator with a wave. Thor gave him a bright and sunny smile before following - if Steve didn't know better, he would say sauntering - behind.
"Sure the two of them should be let out without a chaperone?" Steve said ruefully to Natasha, who had come up beside him to watch them go. "I hate to think what the papers are going to say tomorrow."
"I'm not on Stark-sitting duty at the moment," Natasha said, but her hand caught at Steve's arm when he started to turn away. "Actually, I was hoping to catch you along. There's something we need to discuss."
Steve felt a prickle of wariness go down his spine at the tone of his voice. "Oh?" he said, looking back at her. "Is this 'we' as in Black Widow and Captain America, or 'we' as in The Avengers?"
"More of an Avengers matter, minus one," Natasha said. "Or more accurately, more like a matter for the earthbound parts of the Avengers. It's about Thor."
"What about Thor?" Steve said, somewhat confused. "I mean, maybe this isn't the best side of Earth for him to be seeing, but he's a big boy. Heck, he's over a thousand years old, I don't think anything Earth has to throw at him will phase him -"
"Not about that," Natasha shook her head. "Something's wrong. With Thor."
"Why do you say that?" Steve's brow wrinkled. "He did just fine on today's mission."
"Yes. He did." Natasha's flat tone didn't make it sound like a positive thing.
"So..." Steve raised his opened hands. "What's the problem? He's acting perfectly normal to me."
"That's exactly the thing," Natasha said. "He's acting normal. Key word is acting, Cap. Just a little too studied, a little too pat. Believe me, I'm the expert on putting on acts. And everything Thor's said and done in the past few days has been one."
"But why?" Steve asked in bewilderment.
Natasha shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "Yet. That's what we need to find out. Because if everything really were fine, Cap - why would he need to act like it is?"
There was a pause while they both considered this.
"Do you think we should contact Tony, warn him?" Steve said, concerned for his teammate's safety.
Natasha shrugged. "It's your call," she said. "But I don't think he's in any danger. He's been perfectly harmless for the past week and there's no reason to think that will change anytime soon. This will keep Thor out of the way while we inform the others and try to get a read on what's going on.
"Besides," she added, "aside from Bruce, Tony's probably the best able to defend himself from anything Thor dishes out."
Steve nodded slowly. "All right," he said. "Let's call the others."
In his stone womb far beneath the earth, Thor circled the walls of his prison patiently - one more time. There was nothing else to do, and Thor was convinced that there must be a way out. Others, cleverer than he, would have found it long ago - but even he would find it in the end. He must. He could not sit idly by, waiting for a rescue that might be years coming - if at all. He could not wait and do nothing while above the earth, his friends might be in danger. He must find the way out.
The door was sealed with magic far beyond his ken. Thor had dredged up the fractured magic lessons from his youth and tried to apply them, hoping that with Loki's power behind them they would be more efficacious. To no avail.
He tried the room's furniture again. Tarnished silver, battered wood, musty cloth. Not suitable materials for building with, even if he had known what to build.
There was the spring of water, trickling down over stone; but the entrance for water was far too narrow to admit him even if he could have hoped to swim upstream holding his breath for an unknown stretch of distance.
If he'd had his own strength, and Mjolnir, he could have pounded his way out with brute force. But he had not, and nothing that would replace it. In his frustration Thor collapsed on the thin mattress, staring fixedly at the bubbling spring simply as the only thing in this frozen bubble of stone that still moved.
He continued to stare, imagining he could watch the spring of water trace back to its source. Imagining he could follow the thread all the way up to the open air, to where it would free itself from the rock and leap and bound over green hillsides and pouring waterfalls. It would meet with other springs and streams, joining its strength to theirs, and form a river that would carve its way down to the sea...
How had the water come to be here, in all this impenetrable stone? Thor had only a vague understanding of geology, and the way that water acted on land over time. Yet he knew that water - so seemingly weak, so insubstantial - had the power to wear away stone. In time.
Thor sat bolt upright on the bed, holding his breath, afraid to move a single muscle lest he dislodge the thought hovering about the edges of his consciousness. How did water break down the stone? For water was fluid and mutable, stone solid and unyielding. Yet water could split a boulder; he had seen it done, a block of stone split in twain while the unassuming spring trickled down the middle. In the summer the water flowed over the stone riverbed, seeping into every crack and insinuating into every weak crevice...
And then froze, when winter came; and in the force of its freezing, burst the stone apart like plywood.
Freezing water. Ice. Shattered stone. The beginnings of an epiphany, hovering just out of reach.
Could it be? Could Thor actually have stumbled upon a weakness - an oversight - in his prison? Could it actually be that Loki had overlooked something, had left Thor behind with the very key to his freedom, all unknown?
Thor knew the truth of Loki's heritage, and he knew equally well that Loki hated his ancestry with a violent - even homicidal - fervor. He kept to his Asgardian skin at all times except when dire extremity forced him out of it; never spoke of his true nature, never showed it, never, Thor was willing to bet, thought about it at all.
Loki is a Frost Giant.
And that meant, right now, so was Thor.
So far, Loki was not impressed by these "Vegas."
Although it was autumn on Midgard, and pleasantly cool in New York City, this desolate desert hamlet was still boiling with heat. The humans coped by blasting frigid air throughout their buildings and cars, and Loki was not tolerating the rapid changes of temperature well. He never had been able to bear excessive heat and sunlight well (although that was in his old body - perhaps it was just a psychosomatic reaction, now that he was in Thor's?)
Nevertheless, he made an effort to keep up a jovial façade as Iron Man led him from their private jet landing strip into the city. It was, Loki was forced to admit as the buildings grew up around him, a rather impressive city (for Midgard.) The soaring spires of Asgard it wasn't, but the glass and chrome towers rose up on all sides to a reasonable height, and as they drove down the wide boulevard they passed on the left and right an intriguing variety of shapes and materials. There was one glass-and-chrome material shaped in a pleasing curve; another like the brightly-patterned top of a tent, and yet another that was fashioned like an obsidian pyramid with a piercing white spotlight emerging from the top.
"Welcome to the heart of American decadence, Thor," Tony said proudly, when he noticed Loki looking. They were driving one of his vehicles; he had identified it as a 'Maserati,' although all Midgardian vehicles looked the same to Loki. "A monument to glamorous, frivolous, wasteful spending."
"It seems a merry place," Loki had to allow, and Tony laughed. "What shall we do here?"
"What does anyone do in Vegas? We gamble, of course," Tony said, and veered their car wildly over to the side to pull into a sparkling driveway. Servants in sharp dark suits hovered discreetly to whisk the car away as soon as they got out, and they were quickly escorted indoors.
"All of Vegas runs on the proceeds from the casinos, but mostly the Strip," Tony told him as the lobby opened up around them. It was a huge hall, every surface decked in gaudy, glittering silver and gold foil. The carpets were deeply plush and dyed bright scarlet, and rows and rows of gleaming, flashing machines marched away in every direction. "They pull in so much money from tourists and gamblers that they can afford to subsidize pretty much everything else they do here. In the richest place in America, the food and booze are damn near free, and you get shows on the street every hour."
"A fine arrangement," Loki said, secretly pleased.
Tony led the way to a grand hall, as fine as one that might be found on Asgard (though unpleasantly filled with a foul-smelling smoke.) Mortals in dark suits with shining white frocked coats appeared to usher them forward, ply them with drinks, with food, would sir like a cigar? Loki declined the cigar but took advantage of everything else offered to him, relaxing against the rich low divan with a feeling of great contentment towards the world.
He watched Tony for a time, moving from one gaming table to another, money flowing freely from his hands. News of their high-powered visitor had gotten around; mortal women, decked in skintight dresses and light-catching spangles, manifested out of nowhere to drape themselves against Tony Stark's side. It didn't take him long to pick up on the rules of the various games, and soon he was bored and restless to try his own hand at the tables.
Roulette did not interest him, being far too reliant on pure chance and with the odds skewed impoverishingly towards the house. There was not much fun to be had aside from using a bit of magic to subtly tilt the ball one way or the other, or to get it to do increasingly unlikely things that earned disappointed moans from the eager watchers.
Blackjack was somewhat more interesting, as it only required Loki to keep track of the fifty-two cards in their simplistic deck and calculate the odds of each one appearing next to his hand. Gradually, though, it became repetitive (and the dealers whose money he was steadily winning were getting increasingly agitated) and so Loki moved on. The next table over - closest to where Tony was perched at the head of one of the long roulette pets - was a four-man game of poker.
Now, this was a game worth playing - with enough randomness to keep the game interesting, and yet the true game lay in the face, the expression, in what you could or could not read from your opponents. Deception and counter-deception, masks within masks - a true liar's game.
"My friends!" Loki positioned himself by the empty chair and spoke in Thor's energetic, booming voice. "Might you have space for one more by your fire?"
"Sure, big boy." One of the poker players gestured with a hand that held a cigar. "A bigger pot, a better game. Make yourself at home."
Loki seated himself and looked around the table at his new companions, letting Thor's natural earnestness shine through. The dealer quickly and smoothly handed five cards over in a neat stack and Loki looked down at his hand, prepared to use his brother's honest and open face for all it was worth.
Natasha led Steve to a corner cafe, one of the half-dozen he'd seen on every city block. He assumed this was the start of some elaborate stealth scheme that required them to blend into the crowd, before meeting with her shady contacts or whatever she needed to do. Or maybe she just needed an unsecured wireless network, judging by how hard she was glaring at her phone and punching in numbers.
"So," Steve began as they settled into a half-obscured corner with a good view of the passing street outside. "Are we going to track down Thor's actions in the past few months? Try to figure out where he's been and what he's been doing that could lead to this change of behavior? Get people to nose around and see if there's any news from Asgard? Call up Dr. Strange and ask him to check for any kind of magic abnormalities?"
"Oh, sure," Natasha said with a shrug, "all of those things. But right now SHIELD is doing its Tuesday maintenance, so we won't be able to get anyone on the line. And Strange is out of town on one of his 'I must save the universe' jaunts right now."
Steve blinked, confusion wrinkling his brow. "Wait, if we can't do anything till they get back, then what did you drag me in here for?" he demanded.
"Well, you've never had one of Starbucks' seasonal pumpkin spice lattes, have you?" Natasha replied.
Tony was just getting into the zone at the roulette table - living the high life of wine, women and song (well, brandy rather than wine, and discreetly piped-in muzak rather than song, but one out of three wasn't bad) - when it occurred to him to look around to check on his companion's progress. Tony knew he made a crap escort in a lot of ways; once he'd brought someone to an event he was terribly bad about staying with them, making sure they knew where to go and were having a good time. He'd always relied on others to do that sort of people-management for him - hell, he was usually the one being managed.
But he finally managed to surface long enough to check on Thor's progress, and what he saw made him surge up from his well-couched seat of warm leather and warmer female bodies in alarm. Thor - his bright blond hair and cape were unmistakable - was surrounded by a group of security guards, with one man in the expensive tailored Armani suit of a casino wrangler standing in front of him. Thor was laughing at whatever the man had said, but the rest of the men didn't look terribly amused.
"'Scuse me," Tony muttered, regretfully extricating himself from his seat, and hurried over to the impending conflict. "Uh, what's going on here? Did Big Blondie here do something, smash a jar of chips or what?"
"Mr. Stark." The manager's glower transferred to him with an air of relief. "As pleased as we are to have you patronize our establishment at any time… your friend here has been playing poker."
"Um, that's good?" Tony tried. "I don't see any blood, looks like everybody's teeth are intact, what's the problem?"
"Playing poker very well," the manager continued, a pained note in his voice. "Very, very well. Almost… extraordinarily well. The other players are feeling rather… left out. And we do make a point of making sure that all of our patrons, even the less famous ones, enjoy their time here."
Ah. Tony sighed. Patrons who played very well were not, on their own merits, welcome in a casino. Frankly, it didn't really matter whether they caught a patron actually cheating or not; merely being too consistent at making the cash flow the other way was enough to invite the disgruntlement of the towers. And if said patron refused to cooperate when asked politely, they tended to ask less politely next.
For a moment Tony debated standing his ground, flashing Avengers cred or at least billionaire-playboy-and-actual-alien-diplomat celebrity cred, but he decided it wasn't worth it. They had come out here to have fun, not get into fights with civilian suits. And besides, there was a whole nother street full of casinos out there. "Well, I was just about done here, anyway," he said, flashing them a bright smile. "Ring up both our drinks and put it on our account, will you?"
"Very good, sir," the manager murmured, relief clear in his eyes as Tony headed for their extraordinarily lucky norse God guest.
"Tony!" Thor cried out as he came within sight, raising one hand exuberantly. "My friend, it is good to see you! I have just been learning the gaming customs of Midgard with my new friends!"
He seemed utterly oblivious to the dark glares the his "new friends" at the poker tables aimed at him. Before anyone decided to throw a punch, break their hand on Thor's face, and sue, Tony took his teammate carefully by one huge bicep and steered him towards the stairwell.
"That's great, big guy, but it's time to move on," he said. "The night's still young and there's a whole lotta partying left to do."
As they descended the wide staircase, Tony couldn't resist the temptation to ask. "So, uh... were you cheating, back there?"
"Tony!" Thor flashed him a look of such wounded shock, Tony would have immediately labeled it a put-on if it had been anyone but Thor. "Do you truly believe that I would dishonor the name of my father, my House, of Asgard in such a base and uncouth manner?"
"No, no, of course not. Forget it," Tony said hastily, flapping a hand as though to perish the thought. "I was just wondering, since I know you'd never played poker before, how extraordinary your luck was."
Thor hummed, apparently pleased by the praise. "Aye, well, it is a simple matter of interpreting the expressions of your gaming companions, for the most part," he said. "And what kind of diplomat, what kind of leader of men would I be if I had not these simplest of skills?"
"Oh," Tony said, and decided to leave it at that. "Sure, makes sense to me."
They passed through the lower levels of the tower on their way out the front entrance to the Strip, bypassing the more discreet back entrance they'd come through. Thor looked around with some interest at the rows and rows of brightly-lit, chrome-bedecked slot machines, each one promising a new appealing variation on the theme of "insert money here, never see it again, repeat."
"What games are these?" Thor wanted to know, surveying the crowds of ever-hopeful gamblers. "Compared to the others, they do seem rather... gaudy."
"Oh, sure. Well, they gotta cater to tourists of all classes," Tony waved that away. "Middle-class and working-class joes from all over the American Southwest come here to burn their wages, and the casino's gotta keep something around that they can play. Anyway, I figured if you were tired of gambling for a while, we could head down to the Monte Carlo to take in a show, then see where the night takes us -"
"We are celebrating our victory against the Man of Artifice, are we not?" Thor said enthusiastically, unshipping Mjolnir from his hip. "Aye, and let all the common man celebrate along with us tonight!"
"Uh -" was as far as Tony got before Thor swung the hammer up towards the red-painted ceiling. A flash of bright light jumped from the head of his hammer towards the ceiling, and grounded itself in the ostentatious metal trim. The lights surged to blinding colors - a few popped and snapped, filling the air with the smell of burning wire - and then a cacophony of bells and music filled the hall of the casino as every slot machine on the floor began to pay out at once.
Tony looked from Thor's innocent, enthusiastic expression, to the security men and the panting clerks who had come up to join them, to the joyful near-riot that was breaking out on the slots floor. A few casino employees were trying to block the happy patrons from cashing in their winnings, claiming a system malfunction, but the tide was rising quickly against them.
He looked back to the manager, who was approaching the pair of them with blood in his eye. "You know what?" he said. "This will probably be a lot simpler if I just buy the whole tower right now."
As Thor concentrated intently, a small rivulet of ice slowly snaked its way down his forehead and trickled down his neck. He ignored it as he concentrated on his hand, forcing the water trickling into the cracks in the rock to freeze solid. A muffled report in the stone proclaimed his success, and the small crack gaped wider - by a bare few inches.
Thor went back to the stream again. He had no idea how many hours had passed since his moment of revelation. It had taken a seemingly endless time before he was able to convince his borrowed flesh to take on Jotun form, and for a time he had despaired that his plan would fail before it had even begun.
But then he felt a chill run deep through his bones, and saw the blue creep up his skin through his arm and chest to spread through the rest of him. He had steadfastly ignored looking in the mirror after that, although he didn't need to; he knew what he looked like.
Since then it had been slow, tedious repetition: fetch water from the spring, force it into a small crack in the stone wall, and pour freezing power into it until the ice broke through the stone. He had hollowed a small, shallow tunnel of a few feet into the wall already. At this rate, it might be years before he saw daylight again.
But that did not matter. He would continue, because no matter how long or how laborious the process, he could not give up. Not until he was free again, and his friends were safe.
Barring the mishap of the unexpected business acquisition, the rest of the evening actually got pretty on track from there, more like Tony was envisioning. He cruised slowly up and down the Strip with his top down, the stiff breeze and the setting sun helping to stave off the worst of the desert heat. The Strip livened up around them as the sun went down, brilliant incandescent lights springing up to outline every building, every lamppost, every tree in illumination bright as day but much tackier.
Thor filled out the passenger seat, one boot on the dashboard, one hand hanging over the side as the other swigged alcohol from a meter-long glass. Thor had enthused over the size of the drinks (as well as the size of the desserts they'd gotten on their way out,) admitting that he normally found Midgardian portion sizes too "dainty."
Not something you heard every day in America, Tony reflected.
There was no point to visiting Vegas and not taking in a show, so Tony had vaguely planned to head down to the Monte Carlo to take in a Blue Man Group showing. But Thor had gotten all weird and hostile at the very mention of the name. That had baffled Tony at first, until he vaguely remembered Thor talking about 'Frost Giants' sometime before, and how they were hereditary enemies of the Aesir.
He hadn't figured Thor would be one to get tetchy over a superficial resemblance, especially since Thor had taken pains to stress how the conflict was not only one-sided and that there were plenty of good and honorable Frost Giants as well but eh, whatever. Prejudices that were beaten into you from childhood weren't always easily overcome, no matter how hard the rational and well-meaning part of your brain wanted to.
So the Blue Man Group was out. That was fine; they'd ended up in a Cirque du Soleil performance of Zumanity instead, which turned out to be even better as he and Thor spent most of the performance loudly critiquing the technique of the sex acts being depicted. They got some dirty glares from the ushers and other people in the VIP stands, but Thor seemed completely oblivious and Tony Stark was rich as fuck, so he didn't care.
But what definitely caught Tony off guard was just how easily Thor kept up with, and even surpassed him in their lecherous commentary on the show. He didn't know why it surprised him so much - he knew Thor was technically speaking old as the hills, and came from a culture as famous for its raunchy partying skills as for its imperial conquests. It was just a side of Thor he'd never seen, and maybe because he'd never looked - maybe knowing Captain America had tricked his brain into associating big-and-blondness with stick-up-assedness.
Still, whatever had stopped him from realizing it before, he was glad to realize it now; he couldn't recall the last time he'd had so much fun in the company of one of his teammates. Thor was funny, observant and unexpectedly eloquent in turning both to use, and Tony nearly laughed himself sick before the show was over.
Okay, the margaritas had probably helped with that too. But what else was alcohol for?
As they passed through the lobby on their way out of the show, Tony inquired after Thor's preferences in female company. Prostitution, per se, was still technically illegal in the city of Las Vegas (though not the rest of Nevada,) but that technicality did not deter all manner of gentleman's clubs from springing up around the city's perimeter. Tony wasn't in a hurry to finish the night - not even in the arms of charming female company - but he felt obliged, since one-third of the reason they were here in the first place was to get Thor laid, in the wake of Tony turning him down.
(He still felt kind of bad about that, and was almost having second thoughts - big blond bears weren't usually his type, but there were individual exceptions to everything - if not for the strict no-dating-coworkers clause he'd imposed on himself in the wake of the Pepper catastrophe.)
He needn't have worried, because as it turned out Thor gave some noncommittal response to his question and then immediately hared off in pursuit of the tame lions kept in the MGM Grand Hotel as mascots.
"What fine beasts!" he enthused, running one hand through their manes. The custodians stationed around the lion enclosure made protesting noises, but Thor ignored them; besides which, any Earth animal that tried to take a chunk out of Thor's arm was likely to get broken teeth for their trouble. At any rate, the lions were obviously used to being around people, and bore Thor's attentions with a bored indifference. "What fine mounts they would make!"
"Mounts? What? Thor, no, you can't ride these guys," Tony protested, catching up to him. "They're lions. Who the hell rides lions?"
"The lady Freyja of Vanaheim," Thor answered promptly and yeah, Tony should have seen that coming. "She has a chariot which is drawn by two great cats. There are none of that type on Midgard, but these are fine seconds, indeed!"
For a moment Tony was at a loss to argue with that. Finally he managed "Yeah, well, you don't have a chariot," he said. "And you can't exactly put a saddle on a lion, Thor, they're not horses."
"No, indeed. Horses are far stronger in endurance, and can be much more mercurial of temper," Thor said, an odd glint in his eye. He gave the lion another pat on its huge, muscled neck. "I have mastered a horse. I am sure these would be no challenge."
"Thor, no," Tony said as firmly as possible. As he led the unwilling God of Thunder away from the exhibition, he wondered how in hell he'd ended up as the responsible one.
He was going to need more alcohol to deal with this. A lot more. On their way to the exit, he flagged down one of the many waiters that roamed the floor, and ordered enough alcohol to make two men blind. Or, knowing his past experience with Thor, one Asgardian slightly tipsy.
Fortune smiled on Thor in one way at least. For unknown, uncounted hours he had toiled painstakingly through the rock wall of his prison, angling upwards as he went. But his tunnel had not extended more than a dozen paces of rough-hewn stone before he gave way abruptly to some softer rock, which shattered under even Loki's strength, and then another dozen yards on into empty air.
It was not yet the surface - Thor only wished it could have been that simple. But he had broken into another underground cave system, perhaps part of the very same one that Loki made his lair in. This part of the subterranean caverns was completely natural, uncarved and unfurnished, with no light and only a little water trickling in from some underground stream. He was lost, blind, unarmed, weak and exhausted - but he was free.
Thor wandered long in the darkness, trying his best to keep his sense of direction as he searched for a way out. Unfortunately, just because there were caves did not necessarily mean that there was a way out; these caves could have been made by underground rivers long ago, their entrances collapsed or never carved. Still, progress was progress, and Thor kept to every turn in the caverns that took him higher. More than once, his way forward was blocked by some too-small passageway or partial wall, and he had to use a combination of ice and sheer brute strength to break a way through.
After untold time lost in that labyrinth, Thor caught a whiff of something else - dust and leaves, dry and sun-warmed, and a hint of decaying leaves. He hurried in that direction and soon his senses were rewarded with a feast: the warming of the air in the cavern around him, the sound of rustling wind over rock and grass, and even sunlight, oh Norns, sunlight at last!
He burst eagerly from the cave into full noon, and the difference hit him like a blow from Mjolnir. For long minutes he was just as blind in the sunlight as he had been in the eternal night below, until his furiously watering eyes began to adjust. The heat of the sun beat down on him mercilessly, and Thor could only wonder dazedly if this too were only a matter of being adjusted to dark coolness, or whether the Frost Giant skin he wore was particularly susceptible to the heat and light of the sun.
If that were the case, then Thor had a new problem to worry about. He could see no landmarks or signs of habitation in any direction. Having found his way to freedom against the most unlikely of odds, Thor had no desire to die of exposure in the hinterlands.
After some hesitation, Thor picked the direction that he thought was most closely aligned with the way he'd come through the caverns. He couldn't remember now how close or far to the road had been the cave where Loki had sprung his trap, but at least there he could get his bearings. And once he was on the right side of the warding spell, Loki's lair might contain things of use - shade and rest, water and food, perhaps weapons.
His destination determined, Thor stepped off across the sunny plain, only to find that he did not have to travel far at all to find weapons. There were dozens of them right now, the flimsy metal projectiles that the Midgardians favored. Pointed at his chest.
~tbc...