FrostIronHeadcanon #73: Loki once offered to magic away the shards threatening Tony's heart, but he refused. It was a hard decision, but the arc reactor and the life-threatening shards are a part of him, and a reminder of what he does and why he now does it. It took a lot of discussion, but Loki eventually understood, but still looks at it with sad eyes that make Tony almost regret not taking him up on his offer.


Tony could remember the time he'd finally told Loki why the reactor was in his chest. It was on the night of their one year anniversary. Neither one had bought the other a gift nor made a special dinner. But the sex had been amazing, and after an entire night of truly exhausting and satisfying love-making, both men were tangled around each other. Tony had been on the verge of sleep when Loki had voiced his question. His sensed numbed by fatigue, he'd been unable to make out the words.

"What?" he'd asked sleepily, turning his head towards the mumbling God; his eyes remained closed.

"I asked what this was." And he felt a tentative finger tap the powered magnet in his chest. The action hurt a little (the thing was nailed to his ribs, mind you), and Tony grunted in surprise, opening one eye. Loki wasn't looking at him, his eyes locked onto the glowing reactor in his chest. The blue light cast odd shadows across the sharp planes of the man's face, making him look older. And after a long moment of hesitation, Tony told him the story, without nixing a single detail. His voice was caught in his constricted throat when he mentioned Obadiah—whose name he hadn't spoken since the man's funeral—but he soldiered on. When he finished, Loki lay quiet; it was hard to make the God of Mischief speechless, but Tony had done it. As the sun fully rose from the horizon, Loki finally closed his eyes and slept. Tony was soon to follow.

Two weeks later Tony was working on repairing an arm from his suit when JARVIS alerted him that Loki was on his way to the workshop. No sooner had the AI finished speaking that Loki teleported into the room. He was smiling and clutching a book that had seen better days about three thousand years ago. The cover was made of faded, dark brown leather, the spine wrinkled and paled from being opened countless times over the centuries. He turned to book around in his hands and wordlessly set it before Tony. The papers were yellowed and onion skin-thin. The calligraphy inside was handwritten, ever so often a new flourish indicating a new writer. The only problem, though, was that the entire page Loki was gesturing to was written in ancient runes that hadn't been used since the Anglo-Saxon times.

"Okay, I give up." he said, dropping his wrench into the toolbox by his feet. He grabbed an already soiled rag and began to clean his hands. "What am I looking at?"

"This is a spell." he said, and stepped around the table to run his finger underneath the lines as if it would help Tony read the strange scrawling any better. "It's a removal spell."

"Why do I care? I mean, no offense, but magic isn't really my, uh, my thing." He shrugged, feeling guilty for his lack of enthusiasm at Loki's steadfastly disappearing happiness. He shook his head and picked the book up.

"Most spells like these are summoning. They drive the object toward you," Loki used one hand to gesture, curling his fingers toward himself and jerking his arm backward. "But this, this one is more of a teleportation spell. It will materialize the desired object right into your hands."

"And what does this have to do with me?" Tony rolled his shoulders, feeling and hearing the joints pop. His fingers were next as Loki continued to stare at him. There was, apparently, an underlying message that he was missing.

"Anthony, I can get the missile pieces out of your chest like this." he said, snapping his fingers once.

Tony felt the muscles in his face slacken, voiding it of any emotion. For a long while, he'd made jokes about the shards of metal in his body, had often jabbed about taking the first chance to get them removed. But that had been because there simply wasn't a way to do so. Not then. Tony sighed and lowered his eyes, and Loki knew he wasn't as excited as he was.

"You're not happy." Loki closed the book with delicate care and set it on the table again, leaning against the edge of it. He crossed his ankles, his gaze burning down on Tony's scalp. "I've heard you speak before, always talking about how you'd love to be rid of them."

"I was joking." he said slowly, trying not to get himself or the God worked up too much. "These…this," he said, lightly knocking his knuckles against the glowing reactor in his chest. "It stands for so much, Loki."

He dared to look up. Loki wasn't hiding a bit of his agitation, leaning back against the edge of his table and resting his weight on his hands; there was a challenge in his gaze, lips pursed into a scowl and eyes narrowed to vibrant slits. "Like what?" he demanded coldly. Tony winced at the edge in his voice.

"I told you before about Yensin. About how he sacrificed his life for me, to show me what it was I was doing wrong." Tony ran a hand through his hair, sighing heavily. He didn't want to just pour his baggage all over Loki, but it wasn't easy to summarize his entire reasoning for allowing the shards to stay. He tapped his chest, just to the right of the reactor. "This is like my promise to change. I don't make weapons anymore, not ones that people can just come and take and use. I thought I was protecting people by designing all these bombs and missiles and, in the end, they were used on the very people I was trying to keep safe. The shards, this magnet. They remind me of why I became Iron Man in the first place."

He looked up again, surprised at the new expression that overtook the man's face. He almost looked ashamed of himself for even suggesting the idea. "I apologize," he said after a long moment of silence. "I was not aware of how much you treasured them." Loki turned away and retrieved the thick tome; his shoulders were hunched inward, his head hanging low.

Shit.

Tony jumped up and snaked his arms around his lover's waist, feeling the god tense and freeze at his touch. "I'm not ungrateful for your efforts." he said in a low voice, resting his chin on Loki's shoulders. His breath disturbed a few loose strands of hair around his ear. "You have to understand, though. I could never be me without them."

Loki's jaw clenched, and for a while he said nothing. Finally Loki ran a hand over his hair.

"Thor wished to speak with me today." he said absently. "I should see what it is he wants, or he'll never stop pestering me with it."

And just like that, Tony was hugging empty air. He let his arms drop to his sides, swinging back into place forlornly, the memory of the God's body heat still remaining on Tony's skin. Cursing himself to the hallowed halls of Hell, he returned to his work not even half as enthusiastically as before.

Loki didn't return until early the next morning, thinking himself sneaky as he carefully shut the bedroom door behind him and slowly let the latch slide into its socket. Tony felt the bed collapse underneath his weight as Loki scurried underneath the covers, pausing to undress first. The rustling of clothes sliding to the floor was followed by a quiet yet heavy sigh. Loki was just as hung up on the issue as Tony had guessed he would be, and so when the God finally lay himself down on his side, Tony flipped over and pulled him close. Loki jumped—probably assuming he was deep in sleep—but didn't flee like earlier. Probably because he didn't have any pants.

"I'm sorry," Tony said in his ear. "I know your heart was in the right place." Loki didn't respond. "You know I love you." Once again, Tony's painfully heartfelt words were met with silence. "I said, 'I—'"

"I heard you," he groaned, and let out a deep, controlled breath. "Perhaps I was the one at fault. I didn't realize what kind of attachment you had to your…shrapnel. I won't bring it up again."

And like that the issue was dropped. Tony slept with a lighter heart, holding Loki as he drifted away. The next morning he awoke alone, somehow straddling Loki's pillow; the smell of bacon drifted through his cracked door. Normally Tony wouldn't get up until the sun was on the other side of his tower but Loki rarely cooked for him and he was not going to piss him off after defusing last night's bomb. So he forced himself from the comfortable warmth of his bed and trudged into the living room, fisting at his eyes. Loki was eating silently at the bar in his kitchen. He looked up at Tony's muttered, unintelligible "good morning."

It was a small movement, barely perceptible, but Tony saw as his eyes flickered once again to the glowing blue magnet in his chest. His brow creased, his eyes narrowed. The corners of his mouth crinkled inward, just the slightest of movements that Tony would have missed had he not been looking for them in the first place. He could see the desire to bring up the spell again in Loki's eyes, but he said nothing and returned to the food cooling on his plate. Tony knew it was going to take a while to get over this, for the both of them, and a painful twinge of regret pulled at his heart. It was there, the temptation to allow Loki to remove the metal. It would mean never having to worry about the reactor being stolen or something suddenly going deathly wrong with the new element in his chest. It would be a freedom; a heavy, loathsome lifted from his shoulders. But it would change so much: he would not longer be Iron Man-a horrifying thought he disallowed his mind to entertain-, and the hole in his chest would have to remain. The skin and muscle had grown around and adapted to the apparatus and simply removing it would not solve any of the problems that would no doubt arise from it.

This was going to be a high hill to get over, for the both of them. A few pieces of bacon and some eggs was a good start.