Beyond the Iron Gate, right in front of Tony´s Malibu House, there was a park of about 25 hectares that his neighbors with children used to frequent. In there was a Café Noisette that was only open during the mornings and where he usually went to have breakfast; beside that there was the cage of a Golden Eagle that the owner had put there for public display, and beyond that, in the background of the Park, there was a thick, small group of oaks threes gloomy-looking. Between those three was the hidden terrain, right under the cliff where his house was placed, where Tony had took the Infinity Gauntlet almost three months ago. It was a place only known by Tony, Pepper and some night couples. Since Tony didn´t go there during nights anymore, and Pepper hadn´t liked it much in the first place, under the dim light of the afternoon, he considered himself his only discoverer and owner. It was a quiet place, where he went to think in time to time, when the things in his workshop became too overwhelming.
Two weeks after what he haddecided to call The Welder Incident, Tony had remembered the place. Lately, Loki had been boring him; he never did anything interesting anymore. During the last couple of weeks nothing out of the ordinary had happened in the workshop; his tools remained unmoved, no piece of Titanium was thrown at his way, everything, putting it simply, was following his natural order. It was as if the trickster wasn´t there anymore. As far as Tony knew, he was gone long ago (probably he had decided that a good joke, and a laugh or two were not worth the effort; Loki was exposing himself to the enemy, after all). Tony couldn´t say that he was disappointed; actually, it was a relief not having the trickster around anymore. He would be lying, nevertheless, if he said that things hadn´t become quite boring without him. Pepper, on the other hand, had gone to New York to have meeting with a very important client, and she would not return until late at night. Having nothing else to do, Tony decided he should return to the hidden terrain, out of curiosity more than anything.
The Iron Gate was secured from the inside, as always; Tony leaned forwards, pressing a couple of buttons in the newly repaired control panel, and opened the doors. He crossed the park, passing the Coffee Shop and the Eagle´s cage, stepping into the background of the park. When he arrived to the small group of threes, he loosed some composure; SHIELD had surrounded the place with an electric fence. He couldn´t pass through it.
For a moment he just stood there, not knowing what to do. He couldn´t just call his suit to resolve such a petty problem, (his neighbors would surely not take it kindly) but something close to pride, or maybe arrogance, didn´t let him walk away just because SHIELD didn´t want him there. Then he noticed a larger three, just a couple of inches away from him, which had long branch that passed over the fence and cross it. A silly mistake, really, but it made him smile.
He climbed the tree and passed from branch to branch until he reached a point where he could see the hidden terrain. He thought that the bushes on the other side of the fence were moving, but he didn't give it importance. He clung to the larger branch, and slowly moved forward, putting a hand in front of the other. The branch began to bend; Tony waited until it stopped moving, and let himself fall. The distance with the ground was of only half a meter, and yet...
At the same time that he let go of the tree, something grabbed his feet and pulled them back in a violent way, making him fall face down on the ground. At the moment his hands were together, just above the solar plexus; the movement made them bend inward and squeezed his fists against the Arc Reactor. During an unbearably long time, Tony was a twisted knot of pain. With a tremendous effort he managed to get a little air to enter his lungs. It escaped through his nose then, and he no longer had the strength to breathe again. He tried again, in a series of hissed suctions and pants. The pain gradually disappeared.
He leaned on his elbows and spat, partly powder partly mud. His eyes barely open distinguished Loki, crouched in front of him, a few inches away.
"Greetings, Man of Iron." He said with a smile on his face, taking him from the wrists and forcing him to stand up. Tony just stared at him for a moment, as if he couldn´t believe that he was there; this was the first time in the past month that Loki appeared in front of him like an actually physical being and not as some invisible force throwing things at him. Now that he was seeing him, it seemed surreal, somehow. Then he thought about what had just happened, and his shock instantly became in angriness.
"You son of a bitch!" He screamed, before launching towards to Loki (not really thinking about it) to try and knock him down. The Jotun just made a strange face, barely resembling a smile (that later Tony would learn, Loki always made when he was about to teleport) and instantly disappeared. Instead of falling on top of him, Tony just landed on the ground, confused.
He stood up slowly, warily looking around him. He was alone in the small glade between the trees. He turned to the left and then to the right. Nothing. No one. Something fell on top of his head. He passed a hand through his hair and looked at the ground; it was a rock (a small one, just big enough to call his attention). He looked up and another fell, this time on his forehead. Loki was standing in the larger branch of the tree, smiling at him.
"Now, that was just rude. Is that way of greeting a friend?" The Jotun asked, leaning his head backwards and lifting his chin. Tony frowned and pursed his upper lip (something he always did when he was angry) and took one of the small rocks from the ground to throw it at Loki´s direction. He was tired of the Trickster throwing things at his way.
"We aren´t friends!" He said meaningfully, with all the venom he could manage. And there was Loki again, standing over another branch, and with another wide smile on his face. Tony felt a sparkle of trepidation running down his stomach; suddenly, he was very aware that he didn´t have anything to protect himself. He didn´t have the suit, and he had left the bracelets that called it at home. Not without dread he realized that with all this screaming and snapping he was just taunting the Jotun. This man could easily kill him with a flick of the wrist.
"Don´t look so grim, my fellow Avenger." Loki answered gladly, nevertheless, looking more amused than offended by Tony´s outburst. "Friends or not, I´ve come with gifts." He said meaningfully, making the human frown.
The Jotun jumped from the tree´s branch, falling gracefully in the ground. He took a dark lock that, at the movement, fell out of its place, and put it back behind his ear, before taking three steps towards Tony. When he slipped a hand in one of the many pockets of his asgardian armor (one of the few vestiges from his time with the Æsir, kept out of sentiment, if he said it himself) the human tensed instantly, as if expecting him to draw a weapon and fire at his way. Loki faltered for a moment, and smiled at him again (this time something softer, that in any other person would have been reassuring) and slowly pulled out a scroll from the pocket.
"It has come to my knowledge that you are the new Guardian of the Gauntlet." He said very slowly, putting the scroll on the ground and kicking it at Tony´s way. The human was very edgy already; there was no reason to put him more nervous. Tony narrowed his eyes at him, and eyed him for a moment before bending down to pick up the scroll. It was obviously very old (its pages where yellow already) but it was in a relatively fine state. "If you wish to protect it properly, and not get harmed in the process, you would follow those instructions to the letter."
Tony looked at the scroll, at Loki, and then at the scroll again. He felt confused. "Why are you giving me this?" He asked warily, yet the tension that had grown on his body, disappeared. Loki had been lingering on his workshop for some time now, if he wanted to kill him, or even hurt him, he would have done it already. The man just shrugged, as if it was not a big deal.
"Consider it a peace offering." He said immediately, as if he had been expecting the question. "We might not be on the same side, Man of Iron. But we certainly have a common goal." While he was talking, Loki sounded very convinced of what he was saying, but been who he was, Tony had trouble believing him.
"Yeah, and what would that be?" He asked, clenching the scroll tighter.
"Keep the Gauntlet protected." Loki responded with conviction. "Out of the wrong hands, let us say."
"Yeah, that sounds as if you were giving an explanation, but you really aren´t." Tony accused, pointing Loki with ancient scroll and narrowing his eyes. The Jotun just laughed, taking three steps backwards, and putting his hands behind his back. He disappeared just as fast as he appeared; at one moment he was there, and at the other he was gone.
Tony looked up, then down and behind him. Something made him look to the other side of the fence; there was no one there. He growled under his breath, and leaned back on one of the three´s trunks, letting it carry his weight. During a long time he stayed there, sitting on the ground and looking at the place where Loki had disappeared. He thought about opening the scroll a couple of times, but finally decided against it; he didn´t know what could be inside it, he preferred to be in the safety of his workshop before finding out.
When Tony opened the scroll he found out that there was nothing written on it. At the beginning he didn´t knew what to think; he just stayed there, staring blankly at the piece of paper folded in front of him. He turned it around once, twice, three times, looking for a phrase, a number a letter, anything; but he found nothing. He let it fall on the work desk in front of him, and frowned at it; there was string of anxiety hanging on his chest. He wondered why Loki, of all people, would make so much trouble about a blank, worthless piece of yellow paper.
Convinced that there was something there that he was not seen, he started to run tests on the scroll, looking for unusual traces of energy, maybe a hidden message. It didn´t took long for him to realize, however, that he was not going to find anything. In the past few weeks he had learned that the Jotunn (regardless of his impetuous, raging manners), could be more than just a little puckish when he was bored; that in times of serenity, while he was silently lingering in the workshop, moving things from their place and poking at electronic devices, he could display a harmless level of playfulness that sometimes made Tony forget how very dangerous he was. It crossed his mind that this might as well be one of the many pranks that Loki usually played on him.
It was reckless, he knew, to leave Loki wandering around his workshop so freely, hidden from his own view and from JARVI´s senses. He knew that, as harmless as he had been acting until now, there was always the possibility that his attitude changed. He could steal his technology from him, take away his blueprints, or sabotage his suits; and yet, whenever Tony leave his workshop to go rest, go to a meeting, or just to talk with Pepper, he didn´t felt anxious knowing that Loki was still there. For a moment he wondered if it was because the trickster had saved his life. Whenever his thoughts started to wander over that matter, he shut them down.
The weeks that followed that last incident with Loki came to be strangely normal for Tony. He left the Malibu House and settled down in New York for some time; he had to attend to countless board meetings that he had been avoiding the last months, and supervise a series of brand new projects of the company. Some divisions were closed or their funds were cut offs; others were opened and received a fair amount of money for their start. Tony started to attend to a lot of parties in order to make public relationships; other times he attended just for the sake of it. Pepper was slowly cocking her brain during the office hours, and she was too tired all the time. They rarely talked.
Sharon, one of Tony´s secretaries (a blonde, cute girl, with an unexpected interest for art technology) started to hit on him during the board meetings. Whenever it happened, he openly turned her down, or found his way out of the matter through an exit door. She was persistent, nevertheless; Tony started to take it as just another thing that came to the job, and begin to ignore her.
In time to time, while he lay awake at night, he thought the Infinity Gauntlet and its six gems, safely guarded in one of the Malibu House´s basement; he thought about the prickling eyes of SHIELD on his back, and about Phil Coulson coming to fix matters with Pepper way too often. He thought about his damaged suit and what had happened that day on the beach; about the voice that rang loudly inside his head, and the unresponsive stiffness of his muscles. He made himself a lot of questions, and he didn´t have answers for any of them.
On Saturday of the fifth week, Tony received a text from Pepper; they had begun to communicate almost exclusively that way, because of their ever changing schedules. He recalled that a few days earlier, during a board meeting, he had written her a fairly cheesy text telling her that he missed her and that he wanted to see her. A confession that, maybe because of her answer, that plainly ignored his message, now he found naïve and stupid.
At the end of the message she wrote ´ily´ - a childish thing that she learned in high school and that she never got over. It meant ´I love you´. They had been married for barely a year, and the words had already begun to lose substance. Tony was tired. After having lunch, he fell asleep over the couch in the living room. He felt that something was perishing; maybe even decomposing.
For two days they didn´t saw each other. In the third day she told him that she was going to make a trip to Washington, to close a deal with a new contractor. Her amusement looked like a legal document. Tony didn´t care. An odd, annoying voice in the back of his head told him that surely, Director Coulson would be there too; he tried not to think too much about that. They barely write each other, although the ´ily´ was always there, as the hallmark of a dark mystery, at the bottom of her messages.
Tony realized that his interest towards Sharon was going to a different level a Monday, when they stayed until late at night on Stark Tower, in the administrative offices. After several days full of insipid messages with the never faltering ´ily´, Tony invited her to come up to the penthouse. They had a good time; they talked, they shared thoughts about the company, and they flirted a lot. Sharon´s vocabulary was strange for her age (she was just 25 years old) and yet she seemed mesmerized by everything that fell out of Tony´s mouth. These days Pepper was a remote and angry entity; sometimes she spoke to him, but they neverreally talked. That was, on the contrary, a thorough conversation, moving, fascinating, with no other purpose than laughter.
The night slipped away slowly, with the delicacy and charm of a flying seagull. And with a similar speed. When the elevator was opened and Pepper´s voice sounded in the living room, Sharon was still there.
"Well, well. Then come in and have a cup. We can´t stay outside all night." Pepper got rid of her ponytail and her hair fell all messy over her face. Phil Coulson hugged her from behind, bringing her towards him, and kissed her cheek. Then she turned to look at the bar, and got completely rigid when she saw Tony and Sharon there, looking straight at her. The girl was gazing between her and her husband, trying to contain a laugh; the other three persons in the room were silent.
"… She was already leaving." Tony said stoic, getting up from her chair. Sharon, biting her lower lip, nodded and followed suit.
"I swear it, Tony. " Pepper said, her eyes suddenly looking red. "This is the first time that happens. Don´t think that… God, I don´t even want to know what you are thinking! Please, take that woman away!" She practically screamed, taking a hand to her forehead and gesturing towards the elevator.
Sharon walked though the leaving room and towards the end of the hall. Her eyes were wide open, and she was still biting her lips; maybe what he was containing was a nervous laugh. Tony´s tongue was as dry as a piece of carpet, and a low daze was numbing his legs. He put Sharon in the elevator and pressed the lower button. They didn´t say goodbye to each other.
He came back to the living room dreadfully, and the elevator closed behind him. Coulson was standing behind the table of the bar; he almost seemed to be hiding of Tony. Pepper looked up and crossed the room to stand in front of her husband; her eyes were shining and her chin was wet. Tony´s fists clenched at the sight and he unconsciously turned to glare at Coulson. Pepper was crying.
Tony felt something like a shiver ran down his back, but even deeper. It didn´t stop. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked straight at Pepper´s blue eyes. The woman´s cries stopped, as if someone had taken the voice from her. The fat looking veins in her through became more visible (it happened when he was angry) like a blood flown in the breaking point. Tony gestured towards Coulson, still hiding behind the bar, and started to scream.
"Get that little fucker out of my house!" He said, in obvious resemblance to her words. She glared at him for a moment, and turned in her heels to walk towards Phil; she never made it to the bar. If she did, Tony didn´t saw her.
Suddenly, the glasses of the windows broke, and a wild whistle, as the wind charging against his very forces, made an echo in the room. A loud rumble rang in Tony´s ears, muffing all others sounds, and he immediately felt been pulled back with unexpected force (something cold and soothing gripping tightly at his arm) as the ocher smells of powder filled his nostrils, and heat began to burn through his skin. The explosion in the living room, loud as it was, came as something unexpected.