Update! Yay!
Have I mentioned how much I love you guys recently? I love you guys!
Short author's note this time; enjoy the chapter!
For the first time in many years Tony dreaded falling asleep for fear of a nightmare occurring. It had taken long enough for the Afghanistan flashbacks to recede, let alone the memories from the many battles he had fought in. But having the mismatched family of Avengers living with him, a daughter to raise and a lover to look forward to seeing, Tony had managed to fight back the nightmares until they barely bothered him anymore.
Now he dreaded them again.
Evie had refused to leave her father's side, and asked if he could sleep in her room again. It was understandable considering she was growing increasingly worried that the chitauri would turn up again and this time take her father too. Tony had no problem with this, but since the sofa hadn't been entirely comfortable he instead let her sleep in his king-sized bed. Evie accepted the compromise happily; if nothing else the arc-reactor made the best night-light around.
"Why aren't you asleep yet?"
Tony had been lying on his back and staring up at the dark ceiling, but turned his head at the sound of the voice.
"Loki…?" All he could do was stare as the trickster emerged from the shadows with a gentle smile on his face.
"You're stressed out, you need to rest." The God made no sound as he sat down on the bed then rolled over to nestle up against Tony's side. He ran his hand along the man's chest, his fingers splaying out around the arc-reactor. "Worry isn't going to help anybody, you know."
The mortal closed his eyes with a heavy sigh at the reassuring and familiar weight of Loki's hand coming to rest on his stomach.
"…I'm asleep, aren't I?"
"Of course."
"You're a dream?"
Loki laughed quietly. "Well that's the general assumption to make when one is asleep."
"Not real in any way whatsoever? 'Cause this feels pretty real."
"That's because you have an extremely good imagination and a near-photogenic memory."
"…I hate you."
"No, you hate your own subconsciousness." Loki leant over so that he could rest his head on his partner's chest, Tony's hand automatically coming up so that he could run his fingers through the black hair tickling his chin.
"Where are you? Where did they take you?" The man whispered. He felt rather than heard the God laugh in response.
"Obsolete question. I'm a dream; if you don't know the answer, I can't tell you it."
"Well that's no fun." Tony knew he'd been on a hiding to no-where with the question, but it had been worth a try. By the looks of it his subconscious was at as much of a dead-end as he was.
"How's Evelyn?"
"You're a dream, why are you asking?"
Loki raised his head to smile indulgently at his partner. "Because you know it's exactly what I would ask if I was really able to. And you are worrying about her an awful lot." He propped his chin up on Tony's chest, so that his eyes were hooded due to the angle when he looked up at the inventor.
"Of course I'm worrying, you were snatched away infront of us, she's terrified."
"I'm sorry."
Tony laughed softly. "Now I know you're a dream! I can count the number of times I've heard you apologise on one hand." He gently ran his fingers along Loki's cheek, trying to remind himself that this was not real. "Are you in pain right now? Where-ever you are." He knew the only answer he'd get would be from his own mind, but he still asked it – it made it seem more like Loki was truly there.
"Yes."
"Am I going to be able to rescue you?"
"You know I don't want to be rescued."
Tony smirked slightly. "That wasn't what I asked. I know what you said in your message, but you can't expect me to just sit here and do nothing." He idly wrapped a lock of Loki's hair around his finger in a repetitive gesture. "Can you understand that? Can you accept that?"
"You're looking for such an answer from something that isn't real, Tony."
The man sighed heavily. "I know, I know. But I need to know that you understand that I can't just go on and live my life knowing that you're out there somewhere." He whispered. "I'm going to search for you. I need to know if you can accept that I'm not going to do as you asked."
Loki lifted himself up enough to press a kiss to his partner's cheek. "Dream, Tony. I can't give you these answers."
"I know!" The two words were snapped, but the anger wasn't aimed at the trickster. "I know. I know this isn't real, I know that I'm actually having a conversation with myself right now, but I still need to hear the words, even if they aren't real. I need to hear that you understand why I'm not doing as you've asked." He looked away from the piercing green stare, closing his eyes. "I need to know if you can forgive me." He mumbled.
Two hands cupped his face, and he felt a soft huff of breath across his lips. The whispered words were as faint as the kiss itself as the dream was slowly pulled away by the sound of Jarvis trying to wake him up.
"I forgive you."
MWMWMWMMWMWMMW
The very first thing Tony decided to do was try and retrieve anything that had been caught on the surveillance systems before they had been blocked out by whatever it was the chitauri had been using.
On the plus side, that was a link he could follow. The chitauri technology used to block Loki's magic had also blocked out most of the electrical signals in the vicinity so that was another little fact he could now add to his (short) list of things they knew.
So here he was in the labs, trying to patch together the fractured pieces of footage and readings to make a fuller picture of what they would come up against.
"How are you going to find him, Daddy?" Evie was sitting next to him at the work-station, supposedly researching the Aztecs for her homework, but choosing to watch what her father was doing instead. She had refused to leave his side and since Tony was only doing the theoretical work at the moment the labs currently weren't all that dangerous.
"I don't know yet, I'm still working on it."
"But you will find him, right?"
He reached out to ruffle her hair without ever taking his eyes off the screen. "Why are you even asking? Of course I will."
"But won't he be at the other end of the universe? I thought we could only reach the moon."
"Don't let other people's limits hold you back Evie. Remember; Uncle Thor isn't exactly from around here."
That was more than noticeable this morning since the Avenger's had woken to find their resident Thunder God missing and a hastily scribbled note in the kitchen explaining that he'd gone back to Asgard. Apparently Thor had more faith in his people than Loki ever had since he had mentioned petitioning to the Allfather for help tracking the God of Mischief.
Tony had pragmatically decided that anything was worth a try. Either they would get some divine help – which would be awesome – or Odin would refuse and they'd be no worse off than before Thor had left.
And hell, he had science. Nothing could beat science when it came to getting the job done.
"What are you doing now?"
He also had a small child who apparently didn't understand that some things required concentration.
"I'm trying to patch together all the data that was gathered before the cameras and stuff shorted out."
Evie scrunched up her nose in confusion. "…You're doing a computer jigsaw?"
"Something like that." Tony rubbed a hand across his eyes as the scrolling symbols blurred slightly. It was beginning to look like the Matrix.
"How did they do it?"
"Do what, Evie?"
The girl had the end of her tablet pen in her mouth, but removed it to speak. "How did the monsters teleport? Is it like when Möhðy teleports?"
"I don't know, it's something I need to work on."
"It looked like the same way Möhðy teleports."
"It did, yeah." Tony was barely concentrating on what-ever tangent his daughter was currently entertaining, but something in her line of questioning made him pause and actually listen for a moment. "What do you mean, they looked the same?"
Evie shrugged. "When Möhðy teleports he always blurs a bit before vanishing – like he's moving really fast on the spot – and the monsters did the same thing."
It went without saying that the girl's eyes were better than Tony's – age and all that – but he'd never seen anything remotely like blurring, as she had described it and his vision wasn't that bad. He quickly pulled up a video file of the last Christmas and skipped through it to the very last moment when Loki was leaving.
"Blur, you say?"
"Yeah, you haven't noticed?"
The clip played, only about three seconds worth. One moment Loki was there, the next he had vanished. Tony couldn't see what his daughter was talking about. Was she imagining it?
"Jarvis, slow it down. Half speed."
Still no difference. Here one moment, gone the next.
"Are you sure, little bird?"
Evie pouted. "Yes! The computer's being silly!"
"Okay, okay. Slow it even more then Jarvis. Infact, go for broke and get it as slow as possible."
"Yes sir."
The original three second clip lengthened until it was almost thirty seconds. The screen was HD at its finest and the cameras were the best that even money couldn't buy and even then Tony had to watch it through twice to see what was happening.
In super slow-mo it was possible to see how Loki didn't actually just vanish on the spot. Rather – and Tony felt bad for using the reference, but it was too good an analogy to not use – it looked very similar to the teleport systems in StarTrek. The trickster looked as if he was flying upwards before winking out of existence. Tony knew little of how the teleportation spell worked – it defied normal physics – but this now suggested that there was a brief moment of acceleration before the proper speed could be reached for it to fully work.
"You saw that?" He turned to stare at his daughter in amazement. "You could see that he was moving?"
"Only a blur. Is he flying?"
"I don't think so, but this could be something I can work with." Tony knew that the child had good eye-sight, but this was something else. She had seen a movement that was supposedly too quick for a human eye to follow.
It was times like this that he was reminded that actually she wasn't entirely human.
So, Loki had to accelerate before reaching the speed required for the teleport. He could use that knowledge.
"Daddy-"
"Just a moment, Evie, Daddy's thinking." Tony pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes as ideas sleeted across his mind. This was often the way his inspiration worked; a single stimuli that set off a cascade that he then had to unpick to find sense in all of the ideas. Right now his thoughts were all sleeting in one direction and that was; Newton.
F=ma; Force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration. And here acceleration was the key word.
"Jarvis, I'm thinking Principia Mathematica. Can you-"
"On it, sir."
"I love you, Jarvis!"
Evie watched blankly as the screens of esoteric symbols were minimised and instead a map of the world was put up, with the exact position of Stark Tower a red pin-point.
"Right, Evie's third birthday, he went to Rocco Forte Hotel De Russie in Rome afterwards, because he sent that ironic postcard." Tony had begun to type feverishly, inputting co-ordinates and Google-mapping the exact location of the fancy hotel. "Jarv, is it possible for you to pull up the-"
"Done it sir." The video-file of Loki leaving the night in question popped up in the corner of one of the screens, a complex set of equations unfolding beneath it. "I have pre-empted your next request and am trying to ascertain Mr Laufeyjarsson's velocity upon exit."
"You know me far too well." Tony glanced up at the sound of the sliding door to the labs opening and grinned as Bruce entered. "Brucie! My Jolly Green Giant! Let me guess: you're here to summon us to dinner?"
"Uh…yeah…?" Bruce looked thoroughly unnerved at the huge smile his friend was sporting, given the circumstances. "What are you doing?"
"Daddy's being a genius!" Evelyn piped up before Tony could answer and her Father ruffled her hair fondly.
"Okay, but what are you doing?"
"You heard the child; I'm being a genius." Ironman prodded the screen as emphasis. He slid his stool to one side so that Bruce stand next to him and stare at the screen.
"That looks confusing…"
"I only had this idea a few moments ago, I don't even know if it's possible yet, but so far it's the best I've got."
Dinner forgotten, Bruce pulled a stool over and sat down, trying to make sense of the equations flashing around the screen.
"That looks like the escape velocity formula." He said thoughtfully. "But you're trying to substitute distance into it…?"
Evie watched the two scientists for a moment then sighed and quietly asked Jarvis to send their dinners down to them – she knew her father and his best friend far too well. It didn't bother her that they would be eating in the lab, but it did mean that Aunty Pepper would be hounding them later about it.
She turned her attention back to her tablet whilst waiting for the meals to turn up, fidgeting irritably with the plaster on her neck.
Meanwhile Tony was animatedly explaining his master plan to Bruce, gesticulating enthusiastically as he tried to get his point across.
It was complex, but the plan boiled down to physics.
The acceleration before the teleportation was something new that Tony had never considered before. His theory – only a working theory, since there was no way to know yet if it was possible – was to have Jarvis calculate precisely what that acceleration was. That value would then be matched with the distance between Stark Tower and the Italian hotel that Loki had arrived at. Then a new video would be used where Loki had teleported to a known location and Jarvis would begin the same process again.
"You want to see if there's a link between the acceleration and the distance that he travels." Bruce stated finally.
"Yeah. It's shoddy mathematics since the only time value I've got to go on is the one time he took me with him. I've had to assume that all journeys are roughly that length." Tony flicked a hand vaguely. "But I'm hoping that if there is a link then I can work out a constant to fit into the equation."
"End game being?"
"Evie; do you want to tell Uncle Brucie what you noticed earlier?"
Evie was caught unawares by the question, half-way through a mouthful of noodles. She slurped them up noisily and tried to think.
"That Möhðy and the monsters teleport in the same way?" She ventured.
Tony turned back to Bruce with a wide grin. "My kid's a genius."
The mild-mannered physicist frowned slightly. "So you're basically saying you're trying to work out how far away Loki now is." He shook his head at Tony's huge grin. "That's…brilliant. Completely ridiculous, but still brilliant. Just how many assumptions are you having to make here?"
"Oh, tons." Stark turned back to the screen with a shrug. "It may end up that there isn't a link at all between acceleration and distance when it comes to teleportation. Or that the chitauri use a different method so the calculations would be obsolete anyway. Or that I'm wrong in assuming the time travelled is always the same despite the distance. There are tons of things that could be wrong. As equations go I'm balancing a feather on a soap bubble, but I've only been working on it for…" He glanced at his watch. "Quarter of an hour."
"Ahem." The voice was quiet but emphatic.
"Oh, sorry Jarvis. Okay, my awesome and very British AI has only been working on it for quarter of an hour. But it was my idea. Well…My idea but Evie sparked it. Joint family effort. Me, Evie and Jarvis trying to find Loki. The whole dysfunctional set!"
Bruce's gaze was a little too piercing, to the extent that Tony turned back to the screens again.
"Don't get your hopes up with this, Tony." The warning was soft but spun to sound almost like a command. "This is the long-shot of all long-shots, you can't expect it to work."
"It's a million-to-one chance!" Again, the grin was just a bit too wide, Tony's eyes just a little too wild. "Hey, we all know that million-to-one chances work!"
Bruce glanced towards Evie, who was back to being engrossed in Angry Birds and was not really paying them much attention. "You don't want to get anybody's hopes up." He added meaningfully.
"I…Yeah. Yeah, I know. You know me when I get caught up in a project, though."
"Even a quarter-of-an-hour old project?"
"It's still a project." Tony glanced at their now-cold dinners and Evie's empty plate. "We should probably go upstairs and re-heat those."
"Probably."
The inventor heaved himself off the stool with a groan. "Come on then. Evie? Pudding?" He smiled as his daughter immediately shut the game down and grabbed his hand. "Jarvis? Hold fort and work on this for me? Give me a buzz if you get stuck or come up with anything good."
"Of course sir. You do recognise that the likelihood of my 'getting stuck' is practically nil? But I will call on you should it somehow happen."
"Smart alec."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW
It was another day before Jarvis alerted the Tower to Thor's return, only moments before the god touched down on the landing platform that Tony used for Ironman. The blonde was looking tired and before he even spoke it was obvious that he wasn't bringing good news.
"Heimdall can't see him."
Thor slumped down heavily on the stool at the breakfast bar, gratefully accepting the coffee Natasha offered him, and downing it like a shot of whisky. Other than the red-headed assassin only Tony, Evie and Clint were present, which at least meant they were less likely to all talk over each other.
"So…What does that mean?" Tony remembered the name; some dude at the end of the rainbow-bridge who kept watch over everything, or something like that.
"It means, my friend, that my brother is beyond the nine realms, to where Heimdall's gaze cannot reach."
Clint shifted on his seat. "And that's a bad thing because…?" He yelped as Natasha smacked him around the head. "Okay, okay! Fine, I'm playing nice."
Tony ignored the assassins and focussed on the thunder God. "So, all this means is that he's not in the nine realms. No biggie. We can work with this, I'm trying to find out how far away he is so maybe me and Heima-whatsit can tag-team. I get some co-ordinates, your dude has a peek and bippity-boppity-boo we have Loki back by tea-time and non-the-worse for wear."
Thor smiled weakly. "You humans and your optimism."
"Don't think it'll work? Big guy, have some faith in how awesome my science is!"
"And how awesome Daddy is!" Evie added. She and Tony fist-bumped.
Thor laughed at that, lighting up a little. "Am I to understand that you have been working on something then?"
Clint and Natasha perked up at that – so far Tony had been too busy with his new project to actually explain it to anyone other than Bruce. He looked at the three expectant faces and poured himself a cup of coffee with a groan. He hated explaining science to Thor. Surprisingly enough the god was not an idiot and could understand it well enough, but tended to get far too enthusiastic in trying to relate what he was being told with irrelevant information that he already knew.
"It's still in the works, I don't know how feasible it will be yet, but it's something." He cupped his hands around the warm mug and began to explain his master plan.
He didn't admit that he was hanging all of his hopes on it.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW
"So." Clint found Thor back in the kitchen, hours later.
"Nothing good ever comes out of starting a conversation thus." The god said quietly.
"Yeah, you're probably right." The archer hopped up onto the counter-top of the breakfast-bar, kicking his heels against the cupboard doors. His arm was still in a sling but he was beginning to regain some use of his hand. "You look like shit. Actually you looked like shit earlier too, but you seemed to cheer up with what Tony was saying."
"It was heartening to hear so much enthusiasm and belief in his methods."
"Polite way of saying he's a cocky bastard." Clint plucked an apple out of the fruit bowl, but threw it from hand to hand rather than biting into it.
Thor raised an eyebrow. "You don't believe Tony can do it?"
"I'm not sure if he should do it."
Back when they'd all first been brought together such a comment would have sent Thor off the deep end. However, ten years of friendship and mellowing – not to mentioning accepting that some of his friends held rightful grudges – had given him the ability to accept such statements about his wayward brother.
"You don't think Loki can have changed?"
"I…" Clint ran a hand over his face. "You know what? I really have no fucking clue what I think any more." He stared down at the apple he was holding. "All these years we've watched Evie grow up. We all love her, we'd all do anything for her, and then it turns out she's the child of the bastard who turned me into a drone and made me kill in his name." He shrugged. "And then it turns out that maybe he isn't so much of a bastard any more. Maybe he had good reasons. Maybe he's a damn good parent. Evie obviously adores him and considering he surrendered to the chitauri for her I'd say it's pretty certain that she's his entire world." The archer tossed the apple from one hand to the other. "I don't know, Thor. Tasha thinks he was sincere in those videos – and she knows when someone's sincere or not. I'm just having a really tough time trying to reconcile that the person I still have nightmares about could have been as much a victim as me. And…Well, Tony…"
"Tony obviously loves my brother greatly." Thor mused quietly.
"Yeah. But since when has he ever made good life decisions?"
The god huffed with laughter at that. "But they did seem happy in those clips." He added. "I must admit that I haven't seen Loki looking that content amongst other people for far too long."
"Do you think he really loves Tony?"
"Undoubtedly. He has never uttered those words to someone who was not his family before. Not even to his wife."
"Huh." Clint kicked his heels again, uncaring if he marked the cupboards. "Damn! What the hell?! I don't want to feel sorry for the guy! I don't want to 'brave all hasten to his rescue' and all that crap! I don't want to have to think about how to help rescue Loki from what I've always thought he deserved anyway!"
"You believe him to deserve the torment the chitauri are putting him through?" Thor asked mildly.
"Yes! Well, maybe…I don't know!" The archer threw the apple in frustration and it sailed out of the open window with unerring aim. "Coulson's still dead!"
"I am aware, I saw it happen."
"And you can just accept it. Ten years is not long enough to forgive the death of a friend!"
"What about the death of a warrior in battle?"
Clint and Thor both turned to see Tony leaning in the door-way, arms folded across his chest.
"What are you talking about?" The archer snapped.
Tony shrugged as if he couldn't really care less. "You think that Coulson's death wasn't one of the very first things I ever asked Loki about?" He snapped. "Tell me, Clint, how do you usually react when you're in the middle of enemy territory and one of them points a stupidly big gun at your head? Coulson was armed, he announced his presence and his intent; by Aesir standards it was a fair fight."
"Fair?! Loki stabbed him from behind-"
"You're an assassin, Clint. How many people have you snuck up on?"
"Tony is correct." Thor said heavily. "As much as Coulson was my friend, I must also acknowledge that by the rules of the training both myself and my brother received in our youth, Loki's actions were fair. He fought and killed an attacker in battle situations."
Stark pushed away from the door-frame he was leaning against and entered the kitchen properly. "Look, Barton. I'm not asking you to be best buddies with Loki, or to have anything to do with getting him the hell out of the chitauri's claws. All I want is for you to let me do this and not get in my way. And if at all possible to not be a bastard about him infront of Evie – I don't want her to know that you'd rather her mother were dead.
Clint glared at the inventor. "You had to play the parent card, didn't you?!" He kicked his heels again, deliberately this time. "And 'mother' is a weird term for a bloke."
"That's why we use the Nordic term."
The archer tipped his head to one side, observing Tony through narrowed eyes. "Huh…"
"What?"
"If Loki's the mother I assume that means the mighty God of mischief bottoms during sex."
Thor choked. Tony smirked.
"Yeah. I am that good in bed." He sauntered past Clint to the sink, bumping the archer's knee with his hip as he did so. "I can satisfy a God. Jealous yet?"
Barton scoffed and pushed the inventor away, but there was the ghost of a smile lingering on his face. "You're disgusting, Stark." He jumped down from the counter-top. "I'm outta here, before you start giving a blow-by-blow account."
"Blow-by… Oh Clint you just walked into that one!" The lewd grin sent Clint running from the room.
"You speak of my brother in ways I do not wish to hear." Thor's deep rumble made the smile slip from Tony's face.
"Yeah, sorry big guy. If it's anything, we swapped positions a lot. It was always consensual and-"
"Enough Tony. I don't wish to know of what my little brother likes in bed."
Tony grinned again, although it looked strained and didn't reach his eyes. "Sure, yeah, got it." He pulled a clean glass out of the cupboard over the sink and filled it with water. He had his back to the thunder god but could still hear Thor shifting uneasily. "So…What did your parents say?"
"They…were upset."
"Huh, yeah, I bet."
The sarcasm wasn't lost on the God. "They care deeply for my brother, even if he himself believes otherwise. They were mortified to find that his enemies now have him. And…" He sounded suddenly unsure, not at all like his usual self. "They were also hurt to hear that they had a grandchild that they had not been informed about."
"She isn't their grandchild." Tony gulped down the water and slammed the glass back down on the side.
"She's-"
"Loki's child. And he doesn't consider himself part of your family any more. Not after all the lies and all the shit he had to put up with." Tony turned so that he could have this conversation face-to-face and was surprised to see that this time Thor didn't seem angry about the subject. Rather the god looked small, crumpled. "I let him make the decisions when it came to family."
"I respect that, it just saddens me to think that my brother no longer considers himself as such. That he would want to hide his own child from our parents."
"Huh. Yeah, big wonder. Considering what happened to all his other kids."
Thor's shoulders slumped. "My father – our father – seems to…I believe him to regret past actions." He said quietly. "He wishes to help find Loki and put things right with him."
"Put things right? What the hell does that mean? Throw him back to the north-pole planet he snatched him from in the first place?"
"No!" Thor continued to look devastated, and it was beginning to grate on Tony's nerves. "No, my Father wishes to apologise. He feels that there were better ways in which Loki could have learned of his heritage and he wishes to speak to him of it."
The inventor spluttered. "Apologise?! He thinks a simple sorry will make up for the millennia of crap Loki had to put up with?! Hell, Odin taught him – taught both of you that frost giants were evil, vicious monsters – and he then wonders if maybe, just maybe he didn't handle it right?! How can a simple apology help that?"
"I don't know!" Thor dropped his head to the counter, the thud echoing around the room. "I don't know how my Father thinks Loki can forgive him. I don't know how I can hope he will forgive me. I have wronged my brother and all I can hope is that we can bring him back before it's too late."
"And if we don't?" Tony realised the words were out of his mouth before his brain could intercept them. Thor raised his head to stare at him. "I…I mean of course we will! We're going to get him back, Thor."
"You aren't certain." No-one had ever heard the god attempt to whisper before, but this was the closest Tony had ever heard. "You don't completely believe it's possible, do you?"
There were many replies that jumped to the forefront at that; from arrogant assurance to the bleak and broken truth. In the end Tony tried to find an unhappy middle-ground. "Science isn't an exact thing. I can't guarantee answers, I can't guarantee results and I can't guarantee that he'll still be…still be alive if and when we do recover him." He said slowly. "But what I can promise is that I will do anything to get him back. Anything if it means having him back." He glanced out of the window at the darkening sky. "I just want him back…"
The last few words were so quiet that Thor almost missed them, and then wondered if he'd heard them at all when Tony plastered a trade-mark Stark-grin to his face.
"Well, if I want it to all work I'd better get to it, huh?"
Thor sighed heavily. "My brother looked truly happy with you, Tony Stark. I sincerely hope that he can know that happiness again."
"Yeah, you and me both."
MWMWMWMMWWMMWMWWMMW
It had been two weeks since Tony's genius idea with the teleportation. Jarvis was doing his best but the process was slow and the inventor had to put up with waiting.
Two weeks…
Evie was still refusing to sleep in her own bed – although she now consented to leaving Tony's side during the daytime as long as she was with an Avenger. Fury had tried to gently raise the subject of counselling but so far Evie had been happy enough to talk with her father about how she was feeling. Although if she couldn't go back to her own bed after another week he might start considering it.
One of the big problems that the father and daughter duo had was the simple fact that they only saw Loki twice a year. If he had lived with them then the loss would be far more acute and – in a way – easier to face. But with the way things were it was normal for him not to be around and therefore it was harder to come to terms with the idea that he was well and truly gone.
Tony thinks vaguely that it's probably unhealthy. They should be mourning. There should be grief and tears and shit like that.
All he feels is emptiness. The little voice that whispers it's not real. As if he could possibly hope that Loki would turn up at Christmas. But until there was no sign of the God, it wasn't real.
Or that was what he had been telling himself.
So far the man hadn't thought that there was any other way he would really begin to feel the loss until the day Loki didn't appear. He was wrong.
"Sir, my calculations are complete." Jarvis' voice cut in on Tony's thought processes, bringing his attention away from the new phone he was designing for Natasha.
"Oh? Fabulous! What's the word?"
"The results are not perfect sir, I've had to be somewhat less than precise with some of the workings out since I was dealing with less than precise data, but I believe I have an answer."
"Great!" Tony put the tools down and spun to the computer screen. "How far away is he then? I can get building a –"
"1.07 billion, sir."
"What?!" The inventor dropped his laser screw-driver. "1.07 billion miles!? That's like…Voyager One territory. Bloody hell! How are we meant to get there?!" He ran a hand through his hair. "I've never designed a rocket before. Or a shuttle? Should I build a rocket or a shuttle?"
"Um…"
It was such a rare event to hear the single syllable from Jarvis that Tony actually shut up. An 'um' usually meant something was very very wrong.
"Jarv? What is it?"
"Um. Sir, the units are light years, not miles. Sorry."
"…What?"
Light years…
1.07 billion Light years.
"How many miles to a light year, Jarvis?" Tony's voice was steady and emotionless, his gaze unseeing.
"5.88 × 10^12 miles, sir. By my calculations My Laufeyyarsson is 6.3x10^21 miles away."
6.3x10^21 miles. 6.3 with 21 zeros tagged on the end. Even the genius inventor couldn't get his head around such a number.
"Can you…Can you put the number up on the screen for me, Jarv?" He asked dully. He stared at the result, breath hitching in his throat. It covered nearly halfway across the screen on a Word document.
"I'm sorry sir." Jarvis had dialled down his own volume so that he sounded softer than usual.
"Any idea of direction….?"
"Well, I searched all known NASA databases, and in that distance parameter there is a super-giant elliptical galaxy known as IC 1101. It is in the Serpens constellation. All things considered it is the most likely destination at the moment."
"Oh. So it's visible from Earth?"
There wasn't a reply. Instead the computer screen changed and a handful of false-colour images were put up. Most of them weren't very clear, just a dark expanse with a bright dot in the centre, but one – an x-ray photograph – showed the more typical swirl of the galaxy.
"Huh…" Tony traced the curl with his finger, smudging the screen. His breath was beginning to shudder and hitch as he stared at the picture. A galaxy tens of times bigger than the one containing Earth and yet so far away that even the best telescopes could only perceive it as a tiny dot.
And they couldn't even conclusively say that that was where Loki was.
"Sir? Are you alright sir?"
"No." Tony half slid and half fell from his seat, his back connecting solidly with the side-panel of the work bench.
Billions of light years!
Impossible.
That tiny dot. So far away.
He hadn't expected that. At best he'd thought the chitauri might be on the outer edge of the Milky Way. Billions of light years away. Inconceivable.
"Sir, I believe you are hyperventilating. Should I call Doctor Banner?"
Tony couldn't even reply. He curled over his knees, breath short and painful as he gripped his hair with both hands.
Oh. And there were the tears he'd been wondering about. Not the cursory, silent trails he'd shed that first night. These were the real deal. All pain and noise and snot and horror. Real grief finally finding the outlet it had so far not been able to find and rushing out all at once.
Loki was really well and truly gone. Mankind were barely able to get a robot on another planet. If the God really was in that galaxy then it meant he was so far away that even the most powerful telescopes on Earth could only provide images of blurry pin-spots. And that was of the galaxy. In reality they would be looking for a single planet within it. Or maybe even a moon.
The sheer scale of the galaxy and the number of celestial objects within it were beyond calculation.
Impossible.
Tony had never felt so helpless. Not in the hole in Afghanistan, not falling whilst caked in ice, not when the suit died after he delivered the nuke. Now, perhaps he felt he could understand at what Loki meant by staring into the heart of the universe. That feeling of how infinitesimally big it all is, and how small a single human being is in comparison.
He felt broken.
And dizzy. Really really dizzy.
He didn't really register when a hand appeared between his shoulder blades, gently forcing his head forward and down. The position somewhat banished the darkness that was threatening, but only just.
This can't be real! He can't be gone like this!
There were words. Calm down. Breathe. The hand was rubbing soothing circles on his back as he gulped and gasped, trying to stop the soundless scream that seemed to have looped itself into his throat.
Then the hand vanished and instead an arm was slung over his shoulders, pulling him into a tight hug. The voice never stopped; a quiet and reassuring litany that slowly began to have an effect.
It took a long time before he was able to work out who was with him, and even longer to calm his breathing enough to speak.
"Bruce…?"
"Hey dude, you back with me?"
"…Not really." Tony scrubbed a shaking hand across his eye, not that it made much difference. "I can't save him, Bruce." He whispered hoarsely. "He's too far away, it's bloody impossible."
"Impossible isn't a word we like in these labs." The other scientist's voice was filled with dry irony but still contained a little warm humour. "Never say die."
"I can't do this."
"Oi!" Bruce cupped Tony's face in both hands, uncaring about the mess of snot and tears. "No way do you get to say that! After all the shit you've given me over these past years about learning to do the impossible and live with the Hulk, no way am I going to let you give up so early into your own fight! It's been two weeks, only two weeks. So what if he's impossibly far away? Expand our horizons! Get humanity farther than we've ever been before and do it all in the name of the pagan God who tried to take over the world. You're Tony Stark! Don't. Give. Up. Yet!"
Tony stared at his friend through red-rimmed eyes, not really comprehending what he was being told. "Huh?"
Bruce smiled at him sadly. "Don't worry about it. We'll talk once you're feeling more human. Right now I bet you feel like you've got the mother of all hangovers, right?"
"Uh huh." The inventor couldn't articulate much else. "How did you know to come down?"
"Jarvis told me you were having a panic attack."
"Oh. Is that what it was?"
"Close enough. Not fully panic per say, but the reaction was close enough as to be indistinguishable."
Tony nodded slightly, then groaned and raised a hand to his head. "Fucking hell…"
"Yeah. Come on, headache tablets, large glass of water and bed. You'll feel better tomorrow."
"I highly doubt that."
"Well, better than you feel right now anyway. A good night's sleep always puts a fresh perspective on things come morning."
Tony managed to scramble up to his feet and allowed his friend to support him when his head threatened dizziness again. He glanced at his computer screen but Jarvis had kindly wiped all of the images and instead there was a new render of the Ironman suit showing.
"I dunno what I'd do without all you guys."
"Oh, crash and burn I'm sure. But that's why we're here." Bruce generally kept his sympathy wrapped up in sarcasm, but the way his arm tightened around his friend's waist when Tony stumbled on the stairs spoke more of his support than his actual words ever did.
And to Tony it was the simple act of having a friend there that made it all a little more bearable.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW
His leg hurt.
The simplicity of the statement didn't do the situation justice but it was the most he was able to coherently put into words.
He was slumped back in the corner of the dank cell, the limb in question stretched out infront of him whilst he folded the other up to his chest in a mockery of safety. It hurt too much to do anything more than breathe. Even the mud and filth slicking the floor didn't grasp his attention – some things were just not important anymore.
Broken laughter bubbled in his chest; oh how the mighty have fallen. The sound was harsh and alien, lost as it tried to force out of a throat already torn apart by screaming.
He tried to shift and stopped as the agony shooting through his leg flared again, almost causing him to black out. The limb had been systematically dislocated at the hip, knee and ankle to allow the chitauri better access to the network of ligaments that ran through it. The skin around his knee-cap had been peeled back and the small round bone forcibly removed so that the tendons and nerves were exposed.
The raw wound was filthy from the muck and grime of the cell floor, so much so that it was barely possible to see what was going on under the dirt and blood. Tiny pieces of metal were glinting amongst the mess, clips that were cinched around the exposed nerves and ligaments. Their purpose had been to run a stream of electricity through the muscle – the chitauri had apparently wanted to see how well a Jötunn's physiology could conduct a current.
The answer – as attested to by the way the wound had been cauterised by the high resistance – had been all too well.
Combined with the dislocated bones, the shoddily removed patella and the filth clinging to the open wound it was a wonder that the burn could even be felt over it all.
Loki let his head tip back to thump against the roughly hewn wall.
His leg hurt.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM
So, to fend off questions about what's going through Tony's mind here. Unfortunately when it comes to a sudden and unexpected loss of a loved one I'm writing from personal experience here. The crazy dream sequence, the chirpy 'oh I'm fine' thing Tony had going on and the breakdown/panic attack are all things that I know happen. Maybe other people experience this differently; I'm going with what I know.
Now, I don't usually use my own life experiences to help me write, but it's hard not to in this case. Hopefully I'll be able to portray the huge mix of emotions that happen in these circumstances.
So yeah, if anything here seemed a little psychedelic, it's all real, it all happens.
Especially the dream thing – a very strange thing to experience :)