A/N:
1) Sincere thanks for reviews, encouragement, and great ideas on the last two chapters goes to: cara-tanaka, Heartsnaruto, PlushChrome, The Patchwork Cat, Maia2, LilyWonders, Avengerscrazygal, Satosen, cara-tanaka, IvebeenLOKI'Dyetagain, Mystic 777, and Reader-anonymous-writer. As usual, I'll respond via PM to anyone I can.
Also, thanks for all the faves, alerts, etc, it is most encouraging.
2) I know the waiting has been unfathomably unbearably ridiculous. Now I'm up to my neck in college, work and a frikkin garage remodel for family. Whew. Still, my deepest apologies for keeping you all waiting so long.
3) I've been bashing heads with my uncooperative muse yet again. She's flighty, I'm always tired now, so I hope this doesn't dissapoint.
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"Fucking sonofabitch", Tony snarls, letting anger uncharacteristically get the better of him as he hurls the forceps he was holding across the room, where of course said sonofabitch is none other than Victor von Doom. No combination of epithets would be sufficient to describe Thanos anyway, and Tony cannot - just cannot - think of him without thinking about the dying god one room over.
The real cause of Tony's inability to even repair his damaged armor –he has the feeling he is going to be needing this suit since it is the heaviest artillery-level armor he has made yet, and apparently he can look forward to a psychotic Titan, a fucking Titan of all things, who will definitely come looking for Loki – is the sickening miserable feeling of uselessness which has settled over him, filling his chest with a constricting ache he hasn't felt with this horrible intensity since Yinsen died.
One way or another, Loki's sufferings will be avenged, and Thanos will pay – that's what happens to anyone fucked up enough to mess with someone close to an Avenger - but what will be the point of any of this if Loki still dies?
It isn't helping his repair efforts that Loki – half-dead and thoroughly unconscious Loki – had snapped his right wrist like a matchstick the first time Tony had tried to intervene when Loki had started screaming in his sleep.
The second time Loki had started screaming, it was paired with him thrashing about so violently Tony was sure that he'd sever anew the tenuous connections between his limbs, because as much as the reality brings bile bubbling up in Tony's throat - and he hadn't felt this nauseous since he'd been dying of palladium poisoning - JARVIS's scans indicated that Loki had been dismembered, possibly more than once, and had literally reassembled himself.
There were no signs of the tissue granulation associated with a normal healing process. Instead there were raw bleeding gaps in the muscles and tendons, severed cartilage, interspersed with clusters where everything had been fused together – perfectly, just nowhere near enough to stop the bleeding or ensure that he stayed in one piece.
That time, Tony had approached cautiously, trying to reassure the traumatized god with words. Unfortunately Loki couldn't hear him beneath the volume of his own screaming, and when Tony had reached out in the gentlest possible way – knowing he was inviting trouble but what else could he do? - the answering swing that would have taken Tony's head off had he not honed his reflexes during his armored excursions broke his clavicle instead.
The fact that he had actually been expecting it didn't make it hurt any less, but this time at least, Loki wasn't trying to hurt him, so instead of cursing audibly, he just gritted his teeth and continued talking to Loki, voice forcibly kept reassuring – about how Loki was safe, promising that he wouldn't let this happen again, whatever it took… about his latest improvements to the arc-reactor powering Stark Tower, among other assorted technical rambles interspersing the reassurances, because he didn't know what else to say, he'd never been good at this kind of thing – until Loki finally had registered his presence enough to escape that nightmare and sank once again into exhausted unconsciousness.
The third time, Loki had been writhing and clawing at his abdomen, tearing through bandages and ripping open Tony's meticulously places stitches, and when Tony had tried to intervene, Loki had set his left hand on fire, which pretty much rounded out Tony's problems for the day.
Tony had never been more grateful in his life for DUM-E's affinity for that fire extinguisher. He'd gotten away with only superficial damage which was certainly far less than he'd received repeatedly in the suit, usually when caught up in explosions too intense for his armor to shield out all the heat.
Still, grudgingly aware that his system wasn't working – in less than two hours, Tony's fine motor control had been effectively scrapped - Tony had taken to wearing one of his lightest armors.
Until then he had avoided the very concept because there were entire collections of deep ragged gashes on Loki's wrists and ankles which showed only too clearly that he had been struggling against restraints, and Tony had figured that any touch of metal to Loki's skin would only make things worse.
Unfortunately he wasn't going to be able to take much more damage and remain functional, and though he had every spare suit of armor under JARVIS's command running patrol in and around Stark Tower, like a swarm of angry bees defending their hive, he needed to be ready for battle. The fear in Loki's eyes had told him with miserable clarity that whoever had done this to him would be back for more, and Tony would be damned before he let that happen.
On the other hand, he couldn't simply ignore Loki – not suffering so terribly – especially when for all that Tony had vehemently denied it to every shrink that had ever been assigned to him or latched on to him for the hell of it, he did know what it was like to be trapped by his memories.
He knew what it was like to wake up gasping for air, or clutching at his chest in agony and expecting to find an empty socket where the arc-reactor should have been. He'd even fractured a finger or two from taking a swing at DUM-E – usually it was DUM-E who seemed to have a knack for interrupting the more physically violent memories of torture - though fortunately for the robot, his chassis was a lot sturdier than Tony's hands, and fortunately for Tony, DUM-E never took it the wrong way.
What Loki had been though – the curse, Tony supposes of being practically immortal and becoming the prisoner of someone truly fucking psychotic – he cannot imagine having to live with, much less to live with alone. So armor it was.
To his shock, and relief, instead of exacerbating Loki's fear, the armor had seemed to do the opposite, because when Loki had started screaming and writhing again, at the first touch of his metal clad fingertips to Loki's upper arm, the broken god relaxed abruptly, still half curled up in pain but not struggling anymore.
The servos hummed as Tony shifted, cradling Loki's upper torso in his arms as he'd tried to shift him into a position where JARVIS could assess how much new damage Loki had done to himself by clawing at the deep stab wounds on his abdomen, and at the characteristic sound, Loki turned abruptly – with more force than Tony would have expected - clutching at Tony's armored form with a heartbreaking level of desperation.
At the time, Tony had felt the armor denting under the pressure of Loki's grip, failing to sufficiently protect his ribs from the crushing force – as the alarms going off in his helmet so helpfully and redundantly had indicated before he silenced them – but he hadn't even tried to pull away because at that moment the shivers wracking Loki's ravaged form had transitioned into silent anguished sobs, and despite the fact that a lack of available air was something Tony couldn't be comfortable with since Afghanistan – or suffocating in that portal for that matter - he couldn't leave Loki like that.
Not that prying Loki off him would be possible without hurting Loki further.
Filtered through the electronics of his armor, his voice seemed to be recognized by Loki for the first time –immediately - and if he was to be honest with himself, Tony also had found himself preferring this rendering of it because he'd felt terrified inside and broken by regret – terrified that Loki wouldn't survive, regretful because after a week he'd started to worry about Loki and began to routinely search for him but failed to find Loki the one time he needed to be found – but Iron Man sounded strong and confident beneath the notes of protective anger, and Loki probably needed that reassurance more than to know how close Tony was to falling apart.
When Loki had calmed entirely and seemed to be deeply unconscious again, Tony had replaced the IV that had been knocked loose and tried to re-stitch the wounds that were gaping again and bleeding massively, but had been prevented from doing so – or even applying a pressure bandage - by Loki's agonized thrashing and his hoarse howls of raw pain, because Loki wasn't fighting back anymore – he'd seemed to be at last feeling safe – but he also had rested enough since that first time Tony had given him what treatment he could, and now, having shed the protective cocoon of sheer exhaustion, was more horribly aware of his physical anguish.
At last, Tony had - at JARVIS's reluctant suggestion – decided to risk a morphine injection since the drug did indeed work on Thor, and though Tony knew that Loki was adopted, their physiology couldn't be that different, or so Tony had hoped, though as he slid the needle into the IV port, he couldn't help but wish, and not for the first time, that he'd brought Bruce in on this – or at least had time for a full DNA sequence and organism scale simulation.
By that point, though, Loki was moaning raggedly almost constantly. No time for second-guessing.
At first, and having required a dose as massive as what he'd learned was needed to make a difference to the Thunderer's physiology, the morphine seemed to work. Loki had finally relaxed into sleep, and Tony had felt relieved that Loki was finally no longer suffering, even more so than the fact that once again he could treat those horrible bleeding wounds.
With Loki finally resting peacefully, blissfully oblivious to his physical pain - and despite the horrifying extent of his injuries seemingly stabilized, Tony had been free to attend to the other pressing matter at hand – namely finding who the fuck had done this to Loki so he could reduce the bastard to subatomic fractions with the grand total of every weapon Tony had ever invented.
He still had some ammo stockpiles from the pre-Afghanistan Stark Industries days.
Since that last place Loki had been before literally disappearing from the view of every Earth-orbiting satellite Tony had hacked in to was Latveria, Tony had paid a visit to Doom – a grudgingly peaceful one since right now he has larger scores to settle than his occasional skirmishes with that pest dictator – though he had of course flown there in armor and matched the jerk in pomp by bringing his own 'honor guard' of four additional suits which were flown by JARVIS. After all, he'd learned early on: never trust Victor von Doom.
His precautions turned out to be indispensable because even though his blackmail had been successful in getting him safe passage to this meeting under a flag of truce – Latveria had somehow managed to violate every single international law ever written, repeatedly, and Tony had proof while Doom didn't want to deal with the complications said proof would create for him – the moment he mentioned Loki's name, the self-styled 'Sorcerer Supreme' – a.k.a. the windbag to Tony – had the closest thing to an apoplectic fit that Tony had ever seen, and promptly ordered his every surviving Doombot to rip Iron Man to pieces.
Fortunately there were not as many as usual, and even more fortunately perhaps, Tony was furious enough that he wanted to engage in some minor destruction. Catching a glimpse of one of JARVIS's suits gleefully ripping a Doombot to pieces, he couldn't help but wonder if JARVIS was equally pissed.
In any case, between himself and the suits JARVIS was flying, von Doom's force was soon reduced to scrap metal – too soon maybe if Tony hadn't had Loki to return to ASAP - and after blasting Doom into a few craters with some high yield explosives, Tony had Doom right where he wanted him too.
"Twitch, and I'll rip your head off.", Tony snarls, feeling for all the world like he'd love to carry out the threat
For all his bluster, Doom hadn't seemed inclined to piss of pointlessly that time, or to work on his courage, and he had been in the process of spilling his pathetic guts about the Mad Titan –Thanos- to the furious Iron Man throttling him while the other armors paced around looking for all the world like they wanted a turn when the call from JARVIS came in over his earpiece:
"Sir, Loki's core temperature is beginning to drop rapidly."
It was not the first time that Tony had received bad news while fighting – if he could call this pathetic scene a fight – and normally he'd simply adapt his battle strategy to account for the new information without missing a beat in the engagement.
Tony Stark, master of multitasking, among other things.
That time though he had been utterly distracted – troubled - because there was nothing he could do to fix this, no change of plans that would be enough, whatever he gave, and apparently all Doom needed was Tony's distraction for mere fractions of a second to make his escape, wrecking all five suits of armor in the process.
If it hadn't been for the need to neutralize all five suits so as not be hunted mercilessly by the surviving ones, Doom would have concentrated his force on the occupied one, and Tony would have likely wound up dead, proof - Tony grudgingly admits to himself - that he was definitely not at his best.
Instead of stopping for rudimentary repairs - or to repay Jerkface von Doom for his grade-A-asshole version of hospitality - Tony had returned to Stark Tower with his motley entourage of wrecked armor shedding bits and pieces along the way, barely managing not to crash mid flight thanks to his stabilizers being shot to hell and had futilely tried to distract himself from the heavy ache in his chest with repair work.
But he can't focus, not with Loki's prognosis worsening with each passing moment, and not even bothering to pick up the tools he had thrown across the room in a flash of powerless rage, he paces restlessly into the next one and kneels helplessly by Loki's bedside.
It's actually his bed – the closest comfortable place to deposit Loki after carrying his broken body from the blood covered lab table where Tony had given him preliminary medical care, guided by JARVIS of course – but that's all semantics anyway.
What matters is that Loki is dying, Tony thinks as his chest tightens again with grief.
Loki's torn lips are blue, and his already deathly pale skin has taken on a faint bluish cast as well. All Tony's efforts to warm him up have no effect at all as his internal temperature continues to drop steadily, and even JARVIS who is announcing Loki's steadily worsening condition sounds mournful.
Then again, for all JARVIS's obvious mistrust of Loki after that incident on the rooftop, this horror is something no-one deserved to endure, and Tony thinks that JARVIS would agree.
Resting his head on Loki's chest, Tony sighs again, cursing himself because he can fix almost anything – any machine – but not Loki, and he's never felt more horribly helpless than in this moment, because he can barely hear the sluggish beating of Loki's heart, barely feel the near-nonexistent rise and fall of Loki's chest, even as the wheezing of bleeding lungs somehow manages to rattle even these shallow slow breaths.
And now this – this worst case of uncompensated shock that Tony has ever seen – which can only end with death. Had the morphine been a mistake?
"C'mon, Loki, don't go. Not like this", he whispers, voice cracking, not caring that he is begging, because he cannot save Loki, and just maybe Loki can but Tony isn't sure that he wants to survive.
He had seen as much in the god's green eyes, glazed with horror and pain which could not hide how utterly broken Loki had been – how he'd been very obviously thinking that he could at last die in peace now that he had found refuge, for all that he'd never voiced those thoughts and despite Tony practically begging him to fight for life.
It is true – more than he likes to admit – that the idea of loosing Loki would break him inside, because even when he'd been at the peaks of his fury with the chaos Loki enjoyed unleashing – or rather tried to enjoy unleashing - Tony had always understood where he was coming from. He knew that Loki was hurting, understood the depths of his isolation, because for a time they had walked similar paths – a few different events and a few different choices and he might have been Loki - and one way or another he hadn't wanted the fallen god to be alone.
How bitterly cruel that it was perhaps the result of his efforts that had driven Loki to Latveria to get away from him.
How could he live with himself if it was the thought of him that Loki had been trying to distract himself from there, because Tony knows Loki wouldn't normally have been taken down unprepared and without much of a fight, if Doom's testimony is to be believed, that is.
And worst of all, Tony knows that Loki has always felt unloved and unworthy of love, so what real reason does the god have to fight for survival when living means living with the memories of so much horror, and he has nothing to hold on to.
"Heart rate: thirty-seven beats per minute, core temperature: eighty-point-four degrees Fahrenheit. Blood oxygen saturation: sixty-two percent."
JARVIS's report is laced with the same bleak despondence that Tony feels, but Tony cannot bring himself to respond as he clutches one of Loki's icy hands between his own, feeling the warmth drain out of him just like the last vestiges of his hope.
A human would go into hypothermia at a core temperature of eighty three degrees, and even Thor who despite running significantly hotter than a human had on rare occasions set off alarms on Tony's sensors because his body temperature was capable of plummeting violently when he was tired or injured, never got that cold. And that is to say nothing of brain damage given the deadly low oxygen levels that even administering pure oxygen has done little to improve since Loki is barely breathing at all now.
Again, he thinks of calling Bruce, because he'd decided not to before, figuring that even a good human doctor would be of little help given Loki's different physiology, and since Loki seemed to be healing fine internally, surgery probably wasn't necessary anyway, by JARVIS's estimation at least. Beyond that, all Bruce would have been able to do is give supportive care, and Tony can do that much as well.
Ironically, and despite this sudden turn for the worst, nothing really has changed. He's had JARVIS scan for pathogens, suspecting infection, but found none, and this new terrible development isn't explicable by even the horrific extent of Loki's physical injuries alone, because the worst of Loki's bleeding has stopped, because now that he isn't being constantly afflicted with new injuries and he has been given IV nutrition, he is healing, rapidly.
Every scan, spaced five minutes apart shows significant progress in tissue knitting back together, progressing from granulation to scar-tissue to something almost normal dozens of times faster than would be possible for a human, and yet it seems that Loki is still dying.
"Get Thor.", Tony murmurs darkly, feeling like a traitor since this is going against Loki's express wishes, but desperate for some help, because obviously he doesn't know how to help Loki and if anyone might understand what is happening to Loki it is another of his kind.
Within minutes, the sky darkens and thunder rumbles overhead – apparently JARVIS had given their resident Thunder-god some information as to what had transpired, and Tony walks out onto the rooftop to wait for Thor, hoping that when the inevitable storm ensues - both the metaphorical variety and the literal one – his efforts to protect his equipment from god-sized surges prove sufficient.
It would definitely suck if Thor's anger – because when Thor is angry he practically crackles with electrical energy, and he's never been as angry before as he will be soon - debilitates JARVIS and with him all Tony's armors, and then Thanos decides to show his ugly face.
Either way, Tony cannot bring himself to leave Loki now that his ravaged health has taken this turn for the worst - cannot risk Loki dying alone after everything he has suffered - and watching the churning clouds and the next flash of lightning which is definitely too close for comfort – because damn it, he's not lightning proof - he paces restlessly, hating feeling this utterly useless.
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