ON WITH THE SHOW!
Chapter Eleven: Now You See Me
Tony regains consciousness onto a kind of hell.
Smoke thick in the air swims around him, heavy and choking, and the dull flickering light of scattered fires glowers from beneath a shattered landscape all around. Somehow, none of it has fallen on him, and it takes Tony several long seconds to understand what he's seeing, and where he's seeing it from, and realize that he's fallen – been knocked – to his knees. The skin of his forearms remembers the heat of the explosion that's torn the workroom to shreds, shrinking and cringing even as he lowers them to see –
Devastation. He can barely see more than an arm's length into the burning darkness, but wreckage and ruin cast long shadows, more felt than seen. Broken pipes spew steam and shake gravel from the ceiling, trailing wires burn like fuses, and deep cracks tear into the sections of the ceiling that fared best – elsewhere, great shards of concrete have collapsed to the floor like an indoor avalanche. The reflection of sullen flames, the only source of light, draws his eye to a piece of metal embedded in the charred wall behind him. It's been twisted and warped by incredible heat and force, and other glints betray the presence of shrapnel heavy and sharp enough to slice a body clean in two.
Something has happened here, something bad, and Tony is going to have to deal with it. But there's fire, and this is one of his labs, and the fire suppression system isn't working, because –
EMP, his brain creaks into gear, groping for anything it can catch onto like a bicycle that's thrown its chain. Arc reactor blew up. Knocked out anything electric in range…
The fire. First things first, and he'll worry about the rest when he's figured out what it is. Gotta put out the fire.
Something must have hit him, although the ringing in his ears isn't bad, no more than what's left when he switches the lathe off after a long session reshaping something or other. But there's a faint green haze across his vision, casting less light than the arc reactor in his chest, which itself casts less ambient light than he'd thought at first, and totally unhelpful. Tony blinks it away as he gets to his feet and stumbles forward, and it vanishes.
That first step takes him head-on into a billowing cloud of thick, gritty smoke, and on instinct he drops to his knees again and crawls, heading for the wall on his left. There's a fire extinguisher there. There's always a fire extinguisher or six around in his labs.
It tastes horrible, catching in his lungs and coating them with the stench of burnt stone and stressed metal and the phantom stink of scorched flesh. Somehow, Tony keeps moving as his body tries to dry-heave the air back up. He needs the oxygen, even if it smells like the Ten Rings' camp after he and the Mark I suit got medieval on their asses.
For an endless moment of crawling steps, like he's caught in a loop, he thinks he's back there. He never left. He will always be right here, amidst the failure and the terror and the pain, trapped in the dark confines of heated metal, and alone because the friend by his side is gone, he lost them, and nothing he does will ever be good enough to get him out of this hell…
And then his waving hand falls on the familiar curve of a fire extinguisher. The metal is warm to the touch but not burning, not scorching, not torn and ruptured, and Tony pulls it toward him like a lifeline. He sets his back against the wall it came from, and turns the nozzle on the nightmare around him with all the righteous fury this little anti-flamethrower can muster.
The blast of carbon dioxide beats the smoke back, and clears a space in which he can see. And that's progress, even if it's a space in which he can think, too, and thinking means remembering, and icy despair sweeps over him, leaching into him from the sudden cold of the canister.
Again, something has blown up in his face that he set in motion with unwarranted confidence, everything around him has been destroyed, and – no, no, this time he has most certainly lost Loki, too.
Tony still isn't sure why he's alive, with the shrapnel of their crazy machine embedded in the walls like some sort of psychotic modern art. Study in Destruction, No. 2.
And even if Loki was as lucky, even if he's survived, Tony remembers the magician – the sorcerer like some mad god – he'd seen there at the end, just for seconds. That was the real one, he knows now, and the man he'd shared his bed and his life with had been nothing but a disguise. A lie.
And a cruel one, something put together and proffered only to put Tony right back here again, amongst the rubble and the flames.
The blame for this is not his this time, but it doesn't help at all to blame it on Loki. For one thing, Tony wants to yell at him to his face about this, in depth and in detail and at volume, and there's a horrible, yawning darkness in the pit of his stomach that says he will never get the chance.
Somewhere out there, among the flames, is the man he believed to be his friend lying burnt and still and dead? Shit, Tony can't face that.
So he doesn't. He goes after the pockets of fire like he's waging war on them, him and his canister of safety. He'll control what he can. Fix what he can. Do what he can. And handle the rest as it comes.
Putting out the fires should plunge the destroyed lab into Stygian darkness, but as the smoke clears, Tony finds that some of the lighting panels in the roof are creaking back to life. They're faint and flickering and running on dregs, but slowly, the room begins to clear, aided by the air vents in the ceiling. They're not working well, but they're trying. It's enough for him to avoid falling over chunks of jagged-edged concrete with rebar jutting out from them, or the wreckage of the sensors he'd directed at their stargate, or the warped form of the base of the gate, wrenched from its moorings and shaken to pieces.
At first he doesn't realize what he's seeing, as a blast of carbon dioxide annihilates a cloud of smoke and they settle in greasy mutual destruction to the floor, but when he does, a broken cry escapes him and he drops the extinguisher from suddenly numb hands.
"No." It should be a scream, but instead it emerges as a whisper. "No. God, no."
Tony is, for a moment, absolutely certain that Loki's dead. The magician is slumped against the wall, not like he's collapsed there, but like he was thrown there. There's blood on the wall behind him, a dark shadow above his head, and a network of cracks webbing out from that impact point like a giant, malevolent spider. His head has lolled to one side limply, something dark and viscous dripping from his lips, and his eyes are closed. Even through the leather armor still in place around him, Tony can see one side of his ribs cruelly caved in. The hands lying motionless are burned and blackened all the way up to his elbows, visible beneath shredded, ragged sleeves, like he'd raised them to protect his face.
And there, only there, does Tony see any sign of life. The ashes of that explosion have coated Loki along with everything else in this destroyed room, but his face is slightly cleaner, wet in matching stripes.
Desperate hope fighting its way out of the painful tug at his heart, Tony stumbles towards him. All his anger and betrayal are momentarily forgotten – to hell with that, if only he can chew Loki out properly later – later! Magic word.
If only he's alive to be fought with. Later.
Once Tony's looking, once he's gotten past his instinctive horrified need to look anywhere else, he realizes that Loki's breathing, shallowly and painfully, more in gasps than steady breaths, but it's movement, he's alive!
"Loki –" Tony croaks, crouching beside him and starting to reach out, "are you –"
However that sentence would have ended, Tony never gets to find out, because Loki's eyes fly open and despite the wall at his back and the massive amount of damage to his body, he tries to pull away, actively recoiling. Eyes wide in what might be horror, or fear, he turns his head away from the hand moving towards him.
"St – stay away," he tries to snarl, but it comes out as a ragged gasp. "Keep back – don't –"
What's left of his hands shifts as if he's trying to scramble away, but the moment they move, a narrow scream chokes off whatever else he meant to say. "No –" he manages, eyes rolling wildly. Tony's hand may as well be a spider, the way Loki's looking at it. "No, don't –"
Tony doesn't understand that, but he doesn't have to. "It's okay, it's okay, it's only me. Loki, it's Tony, I don't know what you're seeing, but you hit your head, you hit it bad. Whatever you're seeing, it's not real. Listen to my voice." He swallows down a whimper of sympathetic pain; those beautiful hands…
"How are you even alive?" he whispers. "I'm calling for help –"
And that theory goes straight out the window, as Loki meets his eyes, defiance and fear showing through clearly, and orders, "No!" like a whip snapping.
That one command exhausts him, though, and his next words are a broken gasp. "No, no, don't! Don't –" He coughs, fresh blood flecking his lips; Tony hurts just watching, as Loki puts together enough air to manage a full sentence. "You don't need to," he says. "I'm fine."
The noise that bursts from Tony's throat cannot, under any circumstances, be called a laugh. "You're – you what? Okay, clearly you're a very practiced liar –" You played me, you PLAYED ME, you mad bastard, be alive so I can fucking KILL YOU. "– but that's the single weakest lie I've ever heard."
Loki tries to glare at him, but there's too much pain in it to work, and he's not focusing well. When Tony moves back just a little way, in response to the way Loki's still trying to escape from him – to where, he wonders, and how? – it takes those green eyes, clouded with smoke and impact now, a noticeable moment to focus on him. "I can fix this," he says, panting. He licks at his lips, which just makes them redder.
He's bleeding inside, Tony has to get him help now –
"I'll heal. My people are – we're built stronger than yours."
And Tony freezes, remembering, caught.
Loki's from somewhere else.
Loki is something else, something not human.
"We heal – quickly. I'll be all right."
"To hell with that," Tony says anyway. "I'm –"
Loki won't let him, eyes rolling wildly. "No!" he cries out again. "They'll – I'm not – Tony, please, no!"
There's panic, real panic in his voice. It holds Tony fixed there, on his knees among the ruins. There are still fires smoldering in the corners of the room and rubble settling into new equilibriums, and a man who's not a man, but some kind of space alien from another dimension where magic works, and whom Tony has never understood. And he's…it's…he's begging – begging! – not for help, but to be left alone and in pain.
"You're really frightened," Tony says, at a loss, even as part of him wants to scramble away in instinctive, animal fear of this something other. But that's stupid, that's his ape ancestors running away from or throwing rocks at things they didn't understand, because anything they didn't understand was probably a hungry leopard.
He knows that, on some level, but it's hard to feel and believe that throwing rocks isn't the right and obvious choice of action. Not in the face of the bubbling, boiling acid rage building in his gut.
The magician flinches, and bites into his lip when the movement just hurts more, and whimpers slightly at that, with breath he doesn't have. His lips are very red, and none of it is health and happiness. Throughout it all, the whole Rube Goldberg machine of suffering, Loki won't meet his eyes, in –
Shame?
Tony looks down at him, at this man who has always been in control, playing his long game, keeping Tony guessing and enchanted, and with the ultimate ace up his sleeve the whole time. Magic. Real, beyond-the-laws-of-physics, so-mote-it-be magic. How he must have laughed, at Tony's futile guessing, waving the truth like a joke and knowing it would be taken as such.
Loki could do anything – except, it seems, go home – and now here he is, broken and exhausted, at the mercy of the man he used and deceived.
But it's not Tony he seems afraid of, really, now that Tony's left off trying to get him help. While Tony's only sitting here puzzling, even if he's also trying to restrain the urge to scream and lash out, Loki's fallen still again. His eyes are fluttering closed, clearly-broken ribs heaving painfully, and he keeps licking at his lips and finding nothing there but blood. Tony's no further away, but Loki's calmed as much as he can.
It's not Tony, then, but… "Why wouldn't you –" want medical help, is on the tip of Tony's tongue, and then a thought strikes him.
"Wait," he says aloud. "Whoa. Hang on a minute. So, you're actually…not human."
Loki's eyes open very slightly, shift towards him; the magician says nothing.
Holy shit, there's a real and somehow still alive extraterrestrial an arm's length from him; how did he never notice? "Um…so I've got to ask…what are you, then?"
Tony can almost hear the words being physically pulled from Loki's throat. "Asgardian," he says curtly, and Tony remembers "Asgard, my world" uttered like a prayer. "Aesir."
Conversations he never thought he'd be having on a destroyed workshop floor, number 28… He vaguely remembers some of the Viking myths he'd read, years ago, when he thought Loki was someone he might be able to figure out on his own. Hadn't they used those terms?
"Is that the same thing?" Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tony is still convinced that Loki's concussed and talking nonsense, but all he can apply of basic first-aid is to keep Loki awake and talking, since the man – Asgardian? – won't let him do anything else.
It occurs to Tony that he's not sure how Loki plans to stop him, should the engineer choose to do something and follow through.
"You're…from Earth. Human." Loki has to stop to fight for breath. "I'm Asgardian. Aesir."
"Okay," Tony says. "Right." He can hear the words, but he's not processing any of them, and his mouth moves on his own. "So the aliens really have landed."
Loki takes it literally, probably not up to dealing with Tony's reflexive sarcasm right now. "No," he says. "Just me. And…not landed…so much as fallen."
That, Tony does hear. And he looks again at the desperation and fear on Loki's face, like someone hunted. Realizes that he's hurt and helpless. He puts that together with what he's known for years, that Loki's alone and in hiding, on the run.
And what does that sound like?
What happens, in short, to lone aliens crash-landed in the Nevada desert?
"Wait. Fuck," Tony swears wholeheartedly. "And you've been living in Las Vegas. In Nevada. So you've been hearing Area 51 rumors. There's a ton of stuff about it hidden all over Vegas. I used to tease you about it – goddammit, Loki!" It comes out as a roar, and as a plea. "I'm not going to hurt you! Or hand you over to be…taken apart, or whatever!"
In the poor lighting, he barely catches the way Loki flinches – but that's shame, and it screams as loud as a klaxon that yeah, somewhere, underneath it all, Loki has always been afraid of just that.
True magician, powerful alien from another planet or dimension, or whatever, but he's Gulliver among the Lilliputians, and there are so many more Lilliputians.
"Who the hell do you think I am?" Tony demands, outraged at the thought of betraying him that way. Treacherous bastard Loki may be, but even the idea of calling up, who, SHIELD? and saying hey, so I just blew up a real-life space alien, kind of by accident, want to come take him off my hands and see what makes him tick? makes Tony nauseous.
"I'd never, Loki. I'd never. But actually, while we're on the subject, big question: who the hell are you?"
Loki manages to sigh, and looks away, head rolling awkwardly. After a moment, he looks back, meets Tony's eyes again. "I told you," he says reluctantly. "Loki. …Prince of Asgard. Sorcerer and shapeshifter." A cough cuts his words short, and he moves one burnt hand, the ghost of a familiar dismissive gesture. "There are titles. You don't care."
"…okay," Tony says, after what feels like a very long, open-mouthed silence. Prince? Goddammit, he knew Loki was some kind of aristocrat. He'd been right, after all – he really does have Napoleon in exile here!
"I'm gonna deal with that," Tony promises, because he is, at some point. But he can't stand to watch Loki lick his lips and have them come away bloodier even once more. "After I get you some help –"
"Tony, no." Again, Loki tries to reach out and stop him. He still can't, and Tony flinches again at the sight of those ruined hands, but…
They're bad, but they were worse. His upturned left palm was charred black, and now it's only – only! – a dirty, agonized dark reddish-black.
"I'm healing," Loki says, between breaths. "It's just…not quick. I'm drained. I put everything I had…" Another breath, but he's talking. "…into trying to open the Way." Tony can hear the capitals. "But my magic…regenerates. It's…real. It's coming back."
His eyes close for a minute in a long, exhausted blink, and just as Tony was about to say something, he resumes, "I'm not a healer. I can…only fix myself. But I'm a shapeshifter." Somehow, impossibly, the ghost of a smile plays around his bloody lips. "I can put myself back together…in a new form. It's just…another shapeshift."
Impossible, everything Tony's ever known cries, but impossible truly has never applied to this man. So against his better judgment, even though he should know better, he decides to trust Loki one last time, and looks, trying to get past the horror and calm down enough to evaluate the facts.
Maybe he's imagining it in the bad light, but Loki's hands actually look like hands again, and he's definitely more lucid than he was a few minutes ago. It's hard to tell beneath the alien – literally alien! oh my god what the fuck – armor, but could it be possible, Tony wonders, that the crushed lung that must have been beneath that caved-in side is repairing itself, and taking Loki's ribcage with it?
Tony licks his lips in sympathy, and offers his carefully-considered scientific opinion. "That is the biggest pile of sophist bullshit I've ever heard."
"Hush." Loki coughs exhaustedly. "It works. If I believe it. If I have the power to… So tired…"
The magician – the alien – the prince trails off, eyes closing, and doesn't come back until Tony says, "Loki?"
"No," Loki says, turning away and not opening his eyes; it's a defeated, helpless sound.
Part of Tony wants to coddle him and care for him, put him back together and beg for all the real answers, and he'll believe them this time. He wants to hurt for the broken creature, the lost prince in exile.
The rest, and it's the larger percentage of him, looks at those wounds, and then at the chaos all around them. It takes in the screaming pack of nightmares and flashbacks still hammering at the door to Tony's consciousness, claws screeching down chalkboards as they struggle to get in and pull him down with them, down into the hell that waits there, and they're breaking through. Their weapons are the stench of fire and destruction – Afghanistan. The knowledge, at last, of the deception and manipulation - Stane. The danger Loki deliberately put him in, because he needed a sucker with – oh, the arc reactor; it's always about the technology, isn't it? What Tony can do for people, what he can be used for unwittingly.
All the lies he told, or that he let Tony believe… Loki stood over him and protected him, held him close and calmed him when he panicked at the memory of what was done to him, spoke soft words and soothed him to make Tony trust him, and then took him for all he's worth, and so how the hell is he any better than Stane?
That part looks down at Loki and says serves you right!
"Loki," Tony says, voice calm and cold. It's a voice he doesn't use very often, because he's usually playing too hard to need it, but it's the voice of everyone who ever had the authority to set Tony back on his heels.
And miracle upon miracles, Loki looks up at him again, and flinches back from what he sees there.
"You were using me," Tony says, and if it sounds like a condemnation…it is. It is a deep, deep wound, deeper than the ugly void of the reactor casing in his chest, and Loki knew that, and he took one of those wicked knives of his and carved out his own chunk anyway.
Tony is so fucking done with people using him.
There's no defense he can offer, and Loki barely even tries. "Just wanted to go home," he whispers.
Suddenly furious, not wanting to admit how close to the mark that strikes, Tony stands up and looks around, wanting to be anywhere else. The air has cleared further, the heavy clouds of smoke mostly gone, although a grey haze still lies over everything. It looks, truly, like a bomb has gone off in here, with the best of reasons. I built this for you, I invited you into my life, I never do that, and this, this is what you do with it? This is how you repay me?
Anger, deep and true and completely justified, seethes like cold venom in his throat; he can feel it tugging at his eyes.
Even if –
Sure, this is his lover lying at his feet; sure, it's hard to look at something this wounded and broken and desperate and not feel anything. Sure, Tony has grown to trust and care for him, and he's lost too many people already, and this time yesterday he would have sworn he'd do anything to not lose Loki too.
But Loki was using him, just like everybody else.
But every moment of it might have all been a lie.
At least when people betray him, they show their true selves, and Tony knows them, then. Stane had turned on him, and Tony had seen the greed and spite and jealousy that drove his treacherous mentor.
Loki had turned on him, and Tony had seen – what?
He keeps remembering that scream of pure despair, and the heartbreak in it, like the end of the world. That had been honest, and that had hurt, and god, was that how much pain Loki was in, all the time? Trying to get home, again and again, and never able to get there?
And what, after all, had Tony been willing to do? What monstrosities had he been willing to commit? How many people had he killed, their blood on his armored hands, to go home?
"Answer me one thing," Tony says.
That sound might be a laugh; it might be a cough. Tony's not sure. He doesn't – he doesn't – care. "A question?" Loki asks. "With an honest answer?"
Tony refuses to take the bait, or to remember how much fun they'd had that night. "Just one," he promises, and looks down at him.
"Why the hell am I still alive?"
Loki meets his gaze mutely, mulishly, and says nothing.
"Look at this place," Tony says, waving a hand around. It couldn't have been any more demolished if they'd set about it with a wrecking ball, a couple of bags of AMFO, and a big chunk of C4, and the stargate had torn itself apart like the world's biggest grenade. Shards in the wall, okay, Tony would just like to reiterate that. "Look at you, and you've got super healing powers. I," he says, jabbing a thumb at his chest and the arc reactor for emphasis, "should be dead. I was standing right there. But I'm not. Why, Loki?"
For at least the dozenth time, Loki's tongue comes out, licks at his lips thirstily. But this time, Tony notices, they're not getting any redder. He was bleeding inside, that very real red flag said. And now he's not, or not as much, the worst patched up. But now Tony can see how chalk-pale Loki has gone, and how completely exhausted he is.
Finally, the magician says, "I…put everything I had into breaking through. Opening the Way home. Wasn't enough." He pants for breath, and Tony can hear him slip into delirium. "And too much. Out of balance. I felt it go…No hope. Couldn't stop it. Couldn't hold it. Just…the last drop of my magic left. …I chose."
Tony's hands go cold. "Did you protect me? Is that why I'm still here?"
"Not your fault," Loki says, words scattering. "Lied to you. Didn't want to. It hurt. But…home. Had to. You didn't know. Not your fault. And I could take it. Not you. Not you."
He has his answer.
"You shielded me."
That was what that was, he realizes. He hadn't imagined it after all, that flash of green light just milliseconds before the blast, as Loki screamed. He should have recognized it as something of Loki's straightaway, the color a dead giveaway. The magician's last wisp of…energy, keeping the blast at bay, warding off the shrapnel and the smoke.
Anger and betrayal and reignited trauma tangle within him, warring with sympathy and affection and the battered but still hopeful belief that they might not be so different after all.
That they might, after all, understand each other.
If only they'd been on an equal footing from the beginning.
If only Loki had trusted him!
Tony turns his back, and he walks away, through the destruction, and the wreckage of the best thing he'd ever built.
And until he's out of earshot, he has to keep his eyes fixed forward and grit his teeth against the almost-inaudible, breathless wail of grief and pain and loss and despair behind him.
Loki's truly unconscious when he returns a minute or two later, most of that time spent stepping carefully around the debris littering, and in some cases fracturing, the floor. It's a mess, but it's not as bad as Tony thought at first – everything that was going to fall has fallen, and it doesn't seem like the roof is going to cave in entirely.
He's still so broken, and as Tony crouches down beside him, he can only wonder that this is the improvement. Loki had been worse, before.
"Loki," he says quietly, and puts his free hand on the magician's chest, over his heart, through that black-and-green leather armor. Ashes and blood stain it, turning gold to shadows.
Loki wakes ashamed and hurting, with nowhere to go as he flinches away on reflex.
I wish, Tony thinks for what might be the last time, you trusted me.
"Hi," says Tony. "You idiot."
"Tony?" Loki says, or tries to.
"Shut up," Tony answers, and lifts the mug of water to the magician's parched lips. And he carefully does not notice the sounds Loki makes, which he will never admit might be forced-back tears of pure rage and confusion, as he drinks.
"Where is it, then?" Loki asks, voice dull and resigned.
A few minutes ago, Tony managed to unearth a pair of oversized couch cushions from the wreckage, punching the worst of the ashes and gravel from them and trying not to imagine a certain alien magician's aloof, knowing smirk on the business end of the blows. From this uneasy seat, Tony has been trying to salvage the broken video camera. Probably because it's the least complicated, it's the least damaged of the scientific equipment he pointed at what turned out to be an impressive but catastrophic experiment. Everything else is in ribbons, but if the tiny memory card hasn't been hit directly, maybe there still exists some record of what happened. No one will believe it, but Tony is determined to try.
The EMP probably ruined anything the shockwave and debris left intact, but working with his hands at least gives him something to do and something else to look at.
Not for the first time, he wishes he'd insisted JARVIS be linked in and monitoring. He can't remember how he'd overlooked Loki commanding the AI into blindness and deafness, or why he'd thought giving Loki those permissions was a good idea in the first place.
"Where's what?" Tony answers, after a nice long wait to show how much he doesn't care.
He still looks over in time to see Loki level the most scathing glare the magician can manage at him. It's a shadow of its proper self, but Tony recognizes it; it's the one that says don't play stupid, I don't have the time or patience. "The gun."
The word hits the extended awkward silence like a rock thrown into a cesspool; things are moving, but it's no great improvement.
Tony considers his next words, and decides not to play stupid.
"I thought about it," he says, cold and honest. One of them should probably be. "I wanted to come back here in armor. I imagined it in detail. I could almost hear the repulsors charging, see what you'd look like in the light they'd cast."
Loki sighs like he'd expected nothing else. "So, where?" he asks, matter-of-fact. His eyes move around the room, looking for the hidden weapon.
The tiny screwdriver in Tony's other hand might qualify, going by the way the ridges of the grip bite into his clenched hand. Instead, he says, "One, I don't think you can get up off that floor."
Whatever he is, Loki looks somewhat better. His hands and arms are red and weeping, and his breathing is still erratic and rough, but there's some faint color in his cheeks that isn't splattered blood. As pale as he usually is, Tony wonders if that's a problem, his body swinging too far the other way. He's moved only centimeters, folding his legs into something less crumpled and askew, and he winced as he did it, making Tony wonder if something had been broken in there, too. He's shown no desire – or ability – to go any further.
Tony can't get over that. That's amazing. The punishment his body had taken should have killed him, and would have killed anyone else, anyone not – Asgardian. Alien. Other. But instead Loki's awake and talking as his body puts itself back together.
Now that's magic.
"…so it's not like I need a weapon to defend myself," Tony continues his thought. "And two, if you wanted to hurt me, you would have let me burn."
Loki says nothing, keeping his wounded, hostile silence. But Tony refuses to let that glower make him feel like the bad guy, because he's not. He's the one who's been wronged here, which leads him to:
"And three, I didn't want to shoot you by accident or on impulse, because make no mistake, Loki, I am sitting here trying to fix this goddamn camera, but I am fucking pissed at you!" He grits his teeth and drags his words back from the roar they'd become. "Is that clear?"
Apparently not. "So why didn't you?" Loki asks again. It's not an idle question. He's looking straight at Tony, and there's a genuinely – as far as Tony can tell, because oh, Loki's good; he shouldn't assume he can tell truth from lie ever again – puzzled note in his voice.
"Why…" Tony repeats incredulously. "Let me get this straight. Are you seriously asking me why I didn't bring a gun in here and just shoot you?"
"I…" Loki starts, and trails off. "It's your right. I…can't stop you."
It's your – what the fuck? Tony thinks, and says so. What does Loki think he is, here? A captured prisoner? A condemned criminal? "Loki, I don't know what sort of place you come from, or what sort of fucked-up right you think people have to kill someone who can't fight back, just off-hand because you're mad at them, but we don't do that here."
Loki – the alien – looks at him like he's speaking in tongues, which makes Tony sick. God, does Loki really believe what he just said?
What sort of barbaric hellhole does he come from, where that's a thing that happens?
And he wants to go back there?
Hell, what does that say about Loki, and how he acts when he's not playing at humanity?
Tony's not sure he wants to know.
"Yeah, I kind of want to hit you," he grits out. "Because, as I believe I mentioned, I'm so pissed at you I can't see straight, which explains why this camera is a bigger mess than when I started. But…no. Just…" He can't think of a better word. "No."
Loki turns away, and Tony resists the urge to throw his hands into the air in frustration. Or to throw the screwdriver at the wall.
Actually, he's going to do that.
It doesn't help, except to punctuate the long silence that blooms between them like a corpse flower. The overhead lights have sort of come back on, throwing a sickly, wavering illumination over the destroyed workroom, but it's the sort of light that Tony wants to climb up to and put out of its misery. There are no longer pea-souper fog banks lumbering through the room, but there's a nasty coating of ash and smoke everywhere, and the smell of it is heavy in the air.
The long worktable has been knocked spinning, his proto-rover wrecked. Tony had to climb over it to get out of the door, which the table would block as neatly as any urban-warfare barricade if it hadn't shattered into three misshapen fragments and sundry shards. The bunker's airlock door hangs open like a missing tooth – he never had closed and sealed it, in the end. The whiteboard is more of a blackboard, now, and the shelves look like San Francisco after the 1906 Big One came through, complete with fire damage.
There's something he's forgotten to wonder about – he remembers remembering about it, but he can't remember what it was. He knows he was peeling a strand of Loki's hair out of the clotted blood smeared across the side of his face. He'd been trying to hold the refilled mug so it wouldn't spill all over him, and stomping heavily on the urge to yank cruelly just to express how mad he was, and he'd remembered something.
Never mind. It'll come back to him.
Until then, he asks the question that won't stop stabbing at him. "So was any of it true, then?"
"What?"
Tony glares at Loki's – purposefully? – blank expression. "Anything you told me. Anything you made me guess. You. What you can do. …Us. Any of it. Take your pick."
"It's not my fault you guessed wrongly," Loki says, and the self-righteousness in that has the muscles in Tony's arms screaming with the desire to punch him.
"You sure as hell didn't help," Tony shoots back instead. He'd made logical, reasonable guesses based on the best information he had at hand, and how was he supposed to know that when Loki said magic, he meant it? There's no such thing as –
Well. Fuck.
This is not Tony's day.
Loki says, "You wouldn't have believed me," with so much disgust in his voice Tony's instantly offended, even if all the evidence has proved that true.
"You could have tried," he growls. "So. Was any of it true?"
"Every word," Loki snaps, the haughty arrogance of the untouchable magician and aristocrat back in full force for a moment. "I told you my father was angry with me, and that he'd sent me away, and he has." He layers his next words with thick sarcasm. "I failed to mention that he's the god-king and All-Father of a realm beyond your own, and that he banished me to this world, and blinded me to the Ways home."
"Blinded?" Tony seizes on the word of that he understands best and so can disbelieve properly. Loki's eyes are the sharpest he's ever met, and he's intimately aware of his surroundings; even stunned and probably concussed, he'd been tracking Tony's movements with only a moment's delay.
Loki rolls those eyes. "In here," he specifies, lifting one damaged hand towards his forehead. He moves only his upper arm at the shoulder, still hurting.
"With magic," Tony says bluntly, just to make sure they're on the same crazy page here.
"Yes." No smirk, no sidelong glance, no quietly mischievous laugh. "They're…paths between worlds. They're almost impossible to find, without the knack of sensing them. I could search blindly all my days and never find one."
Tony sets the video camera down before he throws it too. He's had no luck recovering the memory card yet, but throwing it won't help. "Can all…your people…do things like that?"
Finally, finally, he's getting answers, but the answers are goddamn weird, and if Tony hadn't seen with his own eyes Loki's hands knitting back together, or that golden alien city a breath and a universe away, or his own safe bubble amidst devastation, he wouldn't believe a word of it.
But at this point, as he stands up and paces back and forth, just a few steps either way in the narrow clear area where he's kicked and shoved as much of the rubble aside as he can, how much more proof can he ask for?
"No," Loki answers, forthcoming for once. "Not many. Not like me." Pride sneaks into his voice. "I honed my skills deliberately, and I'm very good."
"Well, hooray for you."
Loki glares up at him, not happy about their respective positions. "Most Aesir have a low-level ability, just something innate. Our gift for languages, or for healing. And every einherjar – warrior, soldier perhaps, I heard that not translate – must be able to at least summon his armor."
Questions about language get shelved, for now, as Tony's reminded of the alien armor Loki's still wearing. He can't get over how much it fits him and the way he moves, and when he plays back the memories in his head, he can easily imagine Loki's everyday Earth clothes replaced with that black-and-green leather, more lightweight and flexible than the Iron Man suit but no less showy. "Like that," he says unnecessarily, eyes pinned to that golden curve of metal like a sash – no, a torc, he thinks he remembers from long-ago Dungeons and Dragons, that one girl who painted the miniatures and lectured them all on how historically or mythologically accurate her designs were.
"Yes," Loki confirms, just as unnecessarily.
Tony hunkers down, arms braced on his knees, first checking to make sure he's not going to impale himself on a chunk of concrete. It's not as comfortable as it used to be, and he settles for sitting on the floor again. "So, if you're drained of…magic, I can't believe I just said that, and magic summoned that…" A simple diagram springs to mind. "I'm thinking in terms of batteries here, can I do that?"
The magician sighs, nods permission. "If you like."
"Why can't you turn it back into energy, recharge yourself that way? I assume you've still got your everyday clothes on underneath it…"
Loki mutters something that sounds a lot like these are my everyday clothes. Aloud, he answers, a bit snappily, "For one thing, it's holding my ribs together."
"Oh."
"I'm built stronger than you," Loki offers, ruefully, "but that just means I have to endure internal injuries for longer. I don't get to die of them."
Tony imagines pieces of ribs tearing loose, floating free like knives – "Ouch."
"I may not be human, but I'm a living creature, Tony," Loki rebukes him. "I need air. At this point, I'd survive ripping my lungs to shreds again, but I wouldn't be happy about it."
Again. Tony remembers his own intermittent struggles to breathe and shudders with complete sympathy. "I can't get over the fact that you're still alive."
"I seem to recall cursing you for being fragile," Loki says, perfectly dryly. "You do seem so, to me."
When… Right. Tony scrambles back to his feet again and walks away, getting out of range before he can give into the renewed blinding need to punch Loki, very hard. "…Yeah," he says when he's at a safe distance. "I remember that too. You were saving my life, at the time."
He peeks back over his shoulder just in time to see Loki flinch. "Ah." It's very quiet.
Don't do it, don't do it, don't go there – He can't help it. "And now I know why," Tony growls, swinging around because he's damn well going to say this to Loki's face. "You didn't give a damn about me, did you? You just needed a clever idiot you could bat your eyes at."
"No," Loki objects.
"Yeah?" He doesn't believe a word of it. "Why me, then? …Sorry, I didn't catch that."
Oh, does he know the snarl on that face, and the faint flush that's choleric anger, not coy embarrassment. "I like you," Loki spits like it's a curse.
Tony very nearly laughs, dismissive and disbelieving. "You sleep with all your marks, then?"
And that gets a reaction. Loki's expression and the rage in his voice make everything else seem like playacting, and for a second, Tony believes that he's the prince he'd called himself. Even crumpled against the shattered wall, he's frightening.
"Trickster I may be," Loki says, low and deadly and furious, every word a promise of retribution, "and liar as I need to, but you will think carefully before you call me a whore again."
Holy shit, the danger in that is…really something. Tony finds his knees replaced with jelly, lava burning through his thighs and creeping upwards, and his mouth dry; surely that's why his lips have parted and his breath is panting through them. He's distantly aware that he's staring, fixated like he's starving; he can hear his pulse roaring through his ears and feel it beating in inappropriate places, and the denim of his pants is suddenly very present, impossible to ignore against his skin.
So that's a problem, then.
"I –" Tony starts, and hears as if through a thick blanket that it's barely even a sound, more of a croak from a parched mouth. He licks his lips to try again, and his mouth floods. On the third try, he manages, "I didn't mean it that way."
Maybe, if he's very lucky, Loki didn't notice; his eyes are fixed on the middle distance like it's offended him. "I didn't expect to care for you," he goes on reluctantly. "I didn't even want to. All I wanted was to go home. I thought…" He huffs, almost in disgust. "I'd keep you interested, make you trust me, so I'd have access to your resources, but you wouldn't insist on looking over my shoulder and asking for explanations. Now do you understand why I can't give them to you?"
"Because it's magic." Tony's just going to go with that, and deal with the cognitive dissonance of that versus the rest of his life…later.
"Yes," Loki sighs. "I understand what I can do, but your words, your rules, the way you think…and I make a poor teacher. Quicker and easier to gain your trust than teach you basic magic, much less what I can do."
"Gee, thanks for sparing me that," Tony's mouth says on autopilot. "So everything you've built in Vegas –"
That's a very bitter smile. "Props. Distractions. That…projector I let you see. It's a silver disc, about…" He holds a hand up, fingers crooked, palm towards Tony. The flesh there is burned still, but no more than a bad sunburn, reddened and sore-looking. "Thus."
Tony remembers that, and how much he'd wanted one. Remembers a shadow in an alley, recreated across from a barstool. Remembers sudden rapids, in a river that went nowhere. "Sure."
"Fake. Just something for you to look at, or something to set the spell into, for others to use. I don't need it. It's all here." This time, when Loki raises a hand, his fingers move freely, tapping lightly against a point above and between his eyes. "I like to be able to move my hands when I work, but I don't even need that. I can be bound and blindfolded, and I can still create illusions such as the ones you saw."
The simple genius in that staggers Tony, when he runs it through the steps. "Real magic. Masquerading as fake magic. Presented as real magic. Goddammit. Perfect alibi, coming and going. You were made for Vegas, weren't you?"
Loki snorts. "Don't think I don't see the irony. On Asgard, what I do is not…acceptable." He snaps his words off, shakes his head briefly, and shrugs one-handed. "No…proper. That's the closer term. Where I come from, we're…a warrior kingdom. Skill at arms is valued far more than skill at a craft, and magic on the level I work at, capable of sending those warriors chasing their tails and jumping at shadows, as you say here, is…cheating."
"Sounds like the smart way of doing things, from where I'm standing." He's not actually standing, he's sitting on one of the grimy cushions again, but Tony's pretty sure Loki gets the idea.
The put-upon look he gets in return is something he might have seen any ordinary day, when everything was easy and false between them. "You mean thinking one's way out of a problem, rather than fighting, resorting to force of arms? Unheard of. How are warriors to test their strength, when someone can snap his fingers and change the landscape of the battle entirely?"
"That's bullshit," Tony blurts without thinking.
The magician turns his hands up in a shrug. "Don't scold me for that small deception, Tony. To have my work appreciated so…" He sighs. "I show off, perchance, but you'd do no different."
This is completely true, and Loki knows it perfectly well. But Tony stumbles over a dark spot that plunges straight down into the hurt and betrayal still churning in his heart, throwing out more claws to catch in his flesh with every reluctant confession. "And yet you still want to be anywhere else."
"No," Loki contradicts, immediately and firmly. "Asgard is home. It's…" He looks away, hiding the emotion Tony saw flicker across his eyes, before getting himself under control again and meeting Tony's gaze again. "It's mine, someday, if I can take it. If I can prove to my father that I'm the one who deserves it."
And that's…
Tony doesn't even know what to do with that.
Those two sentences are too big for this room.
God, he's in the middle of a battle for an alien throne. "You said prince," Tony checks, just in case he'd misunderstood.
"Yes," Loki answers, pride and confidence burning like a lantern in his eyes.
"Slumming around on Earth," he double-checks. "In Las Vegas."
That lantern turns into a blowtorch, hissing low but ready to flare up. "I'm stuck," snarls Loki. "I didn't choose to be here, I'm just trying to get home."
All the pretty distractions, the magic and the exiled alien royalty and the healing powers, vanish like they never existed, and the dam they formed between Tony and the churning dark floodwaters of betrayal bursts. The rage and hurt sweep out into his throat and the backs of his eyes, pressure building to a breaking point. But Tony rides it, knuckles white and familiar old bruises aching; at least if he has to do this again, he knows what he's doing.
It doesn't have to surprise him, this time, with how much it hurts. He can grit his teeth and swallow down his pain and narrow his focus to watching Loki get to his feet at last. He can stare with a mixture of fascinated horror and amazed disbelief, as someone who looked on the edge of death braces himself against a boulder-sized chunk of ceiling concrete with hands that were blackened to charcoal, fortifying himself with a deep breath that moves a chest that had been caved in on itself, not long ago. The magician puts his weight on his left leg cautiously, testing it, and Tony watches as he shifts to place his confidence in it again, falling back into that arrogant stance that so fits that archaic armor.
Tony lets Loki check the movement of his hands, and place one of them over his healed side, and even slick his long hair back out of his face, before slamming home the knife that Loki had so readily placed in his arsenal.
"By using me," Tony says.
And oh, there he is. There's the man Tony wants to punch well and good, and maybe do other things to, as Loki narrows his eyes imperiously, and raises his chin to make such a tempting target, and lashes out.
"And what else was I supposed to do?" he demands. "Give up? Live out all my days – and oh, Tony, that is a very long time – pining for home and letting my ignorant oaf of a brother burn the Nine Realms to ashes while I played at entertaining children?" He snaps a hand away dismissively, preemptively. "Don't you stand there and curse me. You would have done the same, to return to your home and set things right. You did."
"Oh, that's a cheap shot," Tony growls, rising to his feet as his hands ball into fists. Fight me, you lying bastard.
Loki sneers at him. "And true."
Tony warns, "Don't you dare. Don't you dare go there." I've trodden that ground already and seen my own share of ashes there, I don't need you digging it up too –
"Oh, are there rules now?" Loki places a hand on his golden breastplate in a parody of surprise and concern, voice fluting high like a scandalized country spinster. Dammit, Tony had known explaining the Masterpiece Theatre joke was a bad idea.
He drops back into his own register and mien immediately, teeth baring in a snarl as he closes in on Tony, who holds his ground. "I'm trying to keep my realm from the destruction that waits for it at my brother's hands, and I'm trapped here in exile on this backwater world overfull of mortals, and I don't have the time or the luxury to follow your code!" He's shouting, now, accented voice carrying. "I have to return home, Tony!"
Loki's standing over him, and if there's anything left of the injuries he was sporting, he's hiding it well. Tony doesn't give a damn how much taller he is; he stares right back and demands, "Well, if you needed my help so badly, didn't it ever occur to you just to ask?"
He'd meant it sarcastically. He never expected Loki to stop short, the mouth that had already been curved around a retort going slack and baffled as the magician blinks.
"What the – oh, you're kidding me! It didn't! You seriously never even –"
"You wouldn't have believed me," Loki says hurriedly, visibly on the defensive as he steps backwards. Just once, but it means Tony can think a little more clearly.
So…it's very hard to think with Loki that close and that…assertive.
"And that stopped you from even trying?" Tony counters.
He's expecting a quick comeback, but instead he gets hesitation. "…people don't," Loki says finally, after chewing on his lower lip for a moment, which yes, Tony watched.
"Don't what? Believe stories like this? Hell, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen you put yourself back together again. My god, you were all but dead. Don't…ever do that to me again, understood? But you're smart, and creative, and hell, you're magic, you're telling me there was nothing you could do to convince me?"
"Don't help!" Loki shouts back at him.
Tony opens his mouth. Closes it again. Decides on, "What?"
"– just for the asking," Loki snarls, waving a hand that ends up dragged through his hair, hanging onto it like it's going to fly away, or like he expects Tony to throw something at his head. "People. Don't."
For a moment, Tony genuinely can't speak, can't parse the depth of mistrust and loneliness that betrays. Loki doesn't have friends, he was told that from the beginning, but… Is there no one, even back on his own world? No one he can rely on to be on his side every time? No one ever?
Given the available options, Tony possibly goes with the wrong one.
"What. The. Fuck," he forces through the knot in his throat. "Loki, what kind of bastards are these people of yours? Hell, what do you think I am?"
Loki hisses through his teeth, eyes flashing, and Tony remembers too late that Loki is a prince who dreams of ruling his own kingdom, one that he's hinted places great value on a sense of honor, and that Tony has just insulted everything Loki treasures.
"Starry-eyed and hungry," Loki spits at him, and his mouth twists sardonically, mocking. "And manipulatable."
Tony throws the punch before he knows what he's doing, right fist clenched and snapping out in a perfect boxing hook. Habits he's learned in the ring with Happy, that had sunk in after all, shift his weight from his back foot to his leading one smoothly, his center of mass moving with the punch and his stance stable despite the gravel beneath him. Everything he's pressed down into his chest so he can talk – okay, shout – past it comes coiling out through his shoulder and elbow like a spring, bracing his wrist and gladly trading the way his stubby fingernails nip at his palm for the pure satisfaction of wiping that spiteful look off Loki's face. He hears himself shouting, something incoherent and wordless and only furious, as his fist swings through a clean arc –
And stops short, all that momentum arrested as Loki catches his wrist.
The force of it echoes back through Tony's arm, and somehow he's the one to stumble, or try to. He's going nowhere, caught by his own blow. Loki doesn't move at all, his raised hand as immobile as a statue's and clenched as tightly as a vise.
He doesn't have the time to think much more than oh right fuck me Loki's stronger than he looks before the magician goes on the attack, face cruel with anger, crowding into Tony's space and not letting him move away.
And even if Tony had anywhere to go, even if he thought he could back up blindly without falling over some chunk of broken stone or scrap metal or fallen piece of furniture, he's held rapt by the savage, aggressive, real danger in Loki's presence. They're breathing into each other's faces, Tony's throat bared vulnerably as he glares into Loki's eyes, and Tony can smell him, that indefinable dark scent he knows so well and could never name, tinged now with smoke and blood and something richer than ozone. Hell, is that magic crackling from him, making all the fine hairs across Tony's skin stand on end in response, or is that just arousal shading from anger and – no, not fear, still somehow only awe, not fear – into something much less appropriate?
"So don't you stand there and curse me as a liar," Loki growls, the pitch of his voice dropping into something harsh and commanding, "because I didn't. Everything I told you was true. Every word. I told you I was from another world, again and again, and you laughed at me. I told you my magic was real, and you didn't believe me. You knew that what I could do was beyond this world, I showed you, and you closed your eyes to it, refusing to even suspect. And who are you to judge me?"
Some withered-dry, sensible part of Tony's brain gets control of his legs, ignoring the screaming tide that's shorting out the rest of his neurons, and he tries to back away, tugging at his imprisoned hand. But Loki only grips it tighter, a sharp squeeze commanding stop that, and follows him step for clumsy step.
"You dare," he hisses. "You, and you're nothing, just another mortal. I'm a prince of the Aesir, of Asgard, as your world is Midgard to us; we fought wars among the stars while your people were still dragging themselves out of the mud and blinking at the lights of our battles in the skies, weeping in confusion and burning your toys to appease us, like we even noticed your crawling little race! We are gods beside you, and it's not my fault you didn't believe me!"
The arrogance takes Tony's breath away, but it was gone already, so he gets his lungs working again on both counts and wishes more blood was going up to his brain. "Bullshit," he challenges. "Bullshit, and you know it! Call it what you need to, whatever lets you feel better, but you lied to me. You lied!"
He knows it's a futile gesture, but he raises his free hand and jabs Loki's chest with it, literally making his point and not caring about the armor in the way. "I trusted you," he curses, "and you're no better than everyone else just using me! Fuck you, I've had enough of that! You're a prettier face and a prettier story, but you're Stane all over again –"
Broken against a concrete wall, hands burnt black, bleeding inside, and Loki hadn't made any cry of pain louder than a whimper, but now he howls like Tony had shot him after all.
"Don't you dare compare me to that creature! I wanted to kill him for what he did to you, and I would have," Loki vows, eyes blazing, teeth bared. "I would have hunted him down and torn him apart for hurting you; you cannot imagine how much I hated him that night!"
There's an animalistic, berserker fury on his face, and it would be terrifying if it was aimed at Tony, but instead it's for him, and that's…weird, but not weird enough for Tony to take it back.
Not that Loki's giving him the chance. "I'm nothing like him," he insists, hand tightening on Tony's wrist again. "You're not even scratched, I defended you before myself and I never wanted you hurt –"
"Hurt?" Tony rages at him, snatching that word from his lips and hurling it back at him; let him choke on it. "Let's talk about hurt, then, you sanctimonious – oh," he realizes, shaking his head once in a sharp snap, "Silvertongue. I really should have known, shouldn't I? You all but told me –"
"I did tell –"
"You want to talk about hurt?" Tony talks right over Loki's yowled protest, free hand darting up to grab at the collar of his surcoat and reel him in closer. "You would have waltzed off through that magic portal and run home without so much as a goodbye or an explanation," he accuses, voice darkening into a snarl of his own as his treacherous, lying magician blinks, just a flicker of eyelashes and a moment of doubt.
He can taste the poison and the hurt in his mouth as he spits, "You were going to leave me! You made me fall in – made me fall for you, and you would have just run off home to your fairyland and left me here!"
You were going to just abandon me, after everything, inflates in his throat and chokes him, and it's not even slightly satisfying that Loki's vise grip loosens from where Tony can feel his own racing pulse against the palm of that beautiful, clever hand.
That, it seems, hits home. "I would…" That's a crack in Loki's armor worth the ragged strips of his sleeves still gaping around his forearms, and Tony takes aim at it again as he defends, "I would have come back. I would have returned to see you again, to –"
"Oh, like hell you would have!" Tony counters, seriously considering kicking the taller man in the shins. He doesn't, because exactly one of them is in armor, and he's shaking so hard with rage it might be only Loki's hand on his wrist that's keeping him from tripping. Instinctive steps move him backwards blindly, even if he's being held up like a rag doll.
"Now you're lying to me," he shouts, "and now I know when you're doing it, because your lips are moving! No, you wouldn't have!"
He draws in a breath, and goes in for the kill. "You don't care! You have never cared –"
Loki's other hand slams against the wall behind him, and Tony realizes only as he startles backwards and his head knocks against it that in their struggling, screaming argument, he's been cornered.
Tony hears something crack, and not a flicker of discomfort or even surprise crosses Loki's face – fuck, had that been the wall, breaking under that blow? He'd always wondered what Loki was capable of, if he actually used the strength he hid so carefully, and now Tony's breaths are coming short and fast, almost panting in that sliver of air they're sharing.
The magician looms over him, lowering his face to Tony's and snarling, eyes wild. Loki's penning him in bodily, pinning Tony there and using his height and weight to his advantage, and the sensible part of Tony's brain tries to dig his shoulder blades into the wall like shovels, needing to retreat before this gorgeous, furious creature gets any closer and finds out exactly what his proximity is doing to Tony.
The rest howls with stupid animal rage and lust, tangled together inextricably, and only by a very great effort of will does Tony stop himself from lunging at Loki right here and now and damn the consequences and his very real grudge.
The hand braced against the wall next to Tony's head is white-knuckled with force and rage as Loki bares his teeth and commands:
"Take. That. Back."
But the Incredible Brain has been overruling Tony's body for a very long time now, and Tony rallies and shouts back, "You set me up!" from the no distance at all of that breath between them.
"And you knew you were doing it, every step of the way! And how dare you," he spits Loki's challenge back in his face, "stand there and say you never meant me to get hurt, because you knew I would be! How long have you been laughing at me behind my back, Loki?"
Loki pulls back a little, shifting his center of gravity more onto his feet and less onto his hand, and Tony tries not to whimper in disappointment as Loki makes a noise disturbingly like tch.
"How long?" Tony roars at him instead.
"I never –" Loki denies.
"Liar. Liar! You made me believe," Tony rages at him, beyond caring that he's still pinned to this wall with something looming over him that could tear out his throat or smash him to the ground or fuck him bloody – any would do, at this point. "You made me trust you, and you've been leading me here since the moment we met, and you didn't give a damn what happened to me, you selfish, vicious bastard!"
Something flares in Loki's eyes. "Vicious?" he repeats, and he smiles with no amusement in it whatsoever, savage and predatory. Tony's mouth goes desert-dry as he suddenly becomes very aware of how close Loki is, how strong he is by comparison, how vulnerable Tony's position really is. The broken man is gone, and now it's Tony who's unquestionably in Loki's power; the magician could do anything to him, and Tony couldn't stop him.
He knew Loki was something dangerous, something other, and still, he'd left his armor behind in the other workroom, and the weapons that might have given him a prayer of stopping Loki from doing whatever the hell he wants to, and he'd come back here anyway.
Loki knows him, and he'd know how to make it hurt, but he'd know how to make it good, too, and even that choice is not in Tony's trapped hand. The edges of his vision close in greedily, narrowing in on the man setting all his nerve endings aflame, fight/flight/fuck/fury reflexes screaming in confusion and overstimulation. There's not enough air in the world to let him get a breath that isn't smoky in new and better ways, heated and hungry and fierce.
"You hypocrite!" Loki sneers, mocking and bitter and razor-edged. "You knew I was dangerous! You knew I wasn't what I seemed! And you like it –"
The sound Tony makes isn't even a word; it's a strangled sound of rejection and aggression and defiance.
And utterly unconvincing, and Tony knows it even as it leaves his throat, and Loki knows it just as well. "Oh, now who's the liar?" Loki smirks. "I can smell it on you, pet. I've tasted it off your skin, I know the sounds you make when you're so far over the edge you know you'll never stop falling, and I'd keep you there forever if I could, and you'd let me, you'd beg me to –"
Some part of Tony's mind is distantly aware that his remaining hand is braced against the wall, fingers scrabbling but he has no idea for what. Maybe just a handhold to keep him from drowning under the blinding rush of pure adrenaline, a high just begging for him to overdose on. Instead, Tony balls it into a fist again and throws another punch at those wicked, ravenous eyes.
It's a rickety, clumsy blow, and Loki bats it aside like a fly, not even missing a beat.
"And while you're busy blaming me, pet, why don't you just admit that I didn't have to do anything? You came after me, and every time you couldn't figure me out, you just got more and more intrigued."
True, true, hatefully true, and Tony hates himself and his magician both for it.
"I never meant to hurt you," Loki insists, low and dangerous, "but don't think I've ruled it out if I need to."
And that's very near a threat, Tony realizes even through the roar of his churning pulse beating in his ears and pooling lower, but he physically cannot care.
"You manipulative bastard –"
Loki sneers. "Like you weren't willing."
"You should have told me –"
"I did."
"That's the most self-serving, arrogant crap I've ever heard, Silvertongue!"
"I told you not to trust me!"
"You made me –"
"I never, all I did was give you the chance and you leapt at it –"
"I'm gonna knock you back on your ass so hard you'll wish you'd never gotten back up –" Tony vows, and tries to struggle away, but in trying to wrench his trapped hand free, he only succeeds in pulling their bodies together.
And maybe Loki steps into it, maybe Loki lets him do it, but Tony doesn't care, because the movement jams his hips up against Loki's and the friction that sends white sparks across his vision and fire into his lungs is the best thing ever.
Okay, so he's not the only one turned on by this fight, and Loki growls and pushes Tony back. But it's vicious desire in his voice, not rage, and he grinds their bodies together even as Tony tries to hit him.
Whatever fight they're having, it's not about the lies anymore, and somewhere they've probably gotten some wires crossed, but Tony doesn't care. Can't care, there's not enough of him left to care, not with his cock hard enough to hurt, and his treacherous, powerful lover rutting against him, snarling. Tony gets his hands all over that and tries to throw him off, but he doesn't manage to do anything but writhe desperately, trying to touch Loki everywhere at once with every centimeter of his own body.
At least whatever wires they've got crossed, they're on the same wavelength about this.
One of Loki's hands positively tears down his chest in a long curve, near-painful and punishing, and Tony cries out and gasps into it, sounds he doesn't consciously know how to make spilling from his open mouth. God, he needs – he needs – something, anything, he needs to hurt this man and he needs what they're doing to never stop.
It's not even thought that has him clawing at that elegant armor, wanting more than anything to get it back off him, see for himself that pale skin is still intact, because Tony's going to wreck it all over again, bruise him and bloody him and then lick him clean all over until he's ruined – serve him right! And it's maddening that he can't get to it, but there's that open throat –
"Tell me to stop," Loki pants into his ear, shoving himself just the slightest distance back on the arm braced over Tony's head, and Tony whines with the deprivation. "Push me away and tell me you hate me, or by night and the Void I will bed you here among the ruins –"
Tony thinks about this for exactly no seconds flat before he kisses Loki hard, hard enough to hurt, biting at the lips that don't open quickly enough to admit him, and wraps his hands around that pale throat only for the leverage he needs to jam his hips up against Loki's, needy and desperate and unashamed.
He feels more than hears something tear as Loki's hands wrench at his clothes, forcing themselves between fabric and skin, and Tony says, "Fuck," against his mouth like it's a prayer rather than a curse or, y'know, a demand. "Oh, c'mon, Loki, please, that's not fair –"
"I don't play fair," Loki growls, and kisses him to make him shut up, knocking his head back against the wall hard enough for stars to swim across Tony's vision, or maybe that's the oxygen deprivation from never, ever wanting to stop kissing him…
"Fuck that," Tony manages, as he jerks into the hand curving around and beneath his ass, "you want that armor off, lover, do you want me to spell out all the ways you want that, or you want me to show – fuck!"
Loki gasps, "Planning on it," and laughs wickedly as Tony whimpers.
And stares, because the black-and-green leather dissolves beneath his questing, groping hands, fading back into nothingness and leaving the magician back in the slim tunic and dark jeans he'd been wearing before everything got crazy.
Tony doesn't even bother with a smart comment, not that he can think of one right now. He's too busy trying to pull that tunic off his lover, and getting nowhere, because how is he supposed to do anything with a slim hand cupping him, stroking and caressing, and a strong arm wrapped around his back, holding him in place and holding him up? He doesn't remember putting his arms around Loki's shoulders, nor his lover picking him up bodily, crushing them together.
"I always wondered if – ah! – you could do that," he manages, congratulating himself for remembering this fact even with Loki outright biting his throat as if trying to devour him. "Put me down, I want you naked, I want to see –"
"You want, you want," Loki mocks him, crooking his fingers; Tony fixes on the way those green eyes blow black as everything else goes away.
And yeah, he'd rather be doing this somewhere a whole lot more comfortable than the ruins Loki had named them, but to hell with that, he wants to do it, they both do. He wants to fill his hands with heated flesh and unbroken skin, and taste it too, wants to watch Loki throw his head back and bite back a scream as he comes under Tony's hands, and getting there now is more important than anything.
It's rough and rushed, crude and shameless, beyond anything acceptable and sensible and rational, and the best thing about it –
– as Tony cries out and feels his hips jerk uncontrollably, and he gasps out, "'m not gonna last, Loki –", and Loki kisses him fiercely and answers him, "Then don't, I'm not done with you" –
– as he fists a hand in long black hair and buries his face in a bare and unmarked shoulder, tasting his lover's sweat on his tongue –
– as he feels more than sees Loki move a hand to his own cock, and tries to peel his eyes open to watch that even as he chases his own climax –
– as Loki sinks his fingers into Tony's back like claws, and Tony cries out –
– as that tiny, meaningless stimulus tips him over the edge and the chaos burning up his body goes into overload –
– is that it's true.
The salvaged couch cushions make a terrible bed, but they're better than the rubble-strewn, grimy workshop floor, and it's not like Tony's planning on sleeping there. Not for more than a few minutes while his eyes drift closed, feeling sweat and come cooling on his bare skin but warmed by the body wrapped around his.
He suspects he's being held more like a teddy bear than a lover, but shut up, brain, this is really nice.
Drowsily, he trails a hand across his lover's side, fascinated by the way Loki's skin is unmarked by more than temporary, fading bruises and the few old scars. He still can't believe Loki's not human – except for that exceptional strength, everything else is the same. Tony would have noticed, otherwise, with the time and effort he's put into learning every hot spot and pressure point and tangle of nerves that make his lover gasp and moan.
Their two species must be related somewhere, surely… A question for another time, perhaps, and Tony can't help but speak the words that sum it all up.
"Holy shit," he says, more a prayer than a curse, an exclamation of pure wonder, "you're really for real."
Loki sighs into his hair before releasing Tony just enough so the magician can glare at him, halfhearted and amused. "For the last time, Tony – yes. Will you at last believe me?"
Mischief of Tony's own tweaks at the back of his mind like someone pinching his ass. "Prove it," he blurts, grinning.
For that, he gets the flattest look he's ever seen on anyone's face, and Loki makes it an art form. "You're joking."
He is, almost, but he can't stop, riding a wave of endorphins like a tsunami that should have drowned him. Instead he's laughing with pure joy at this incredible, impossible twist his life has just taken, and as he sits up, he might be underground and naked, filthy and sticky, but he's on top of the world.
"Show me something," he insists. "Something that couldn't be faked."
Loki props himself up on one elbow, his mouth twisting in exasperation. "That I'm alive proved nothing? My armor? The gateway to another world, before your eyes? None of these things convinced you?"
Oh, no, I believe you. Dear god, I believe you, but that's not why I'm asking, Tony doesn't say. Instead, he counters with, "Most of the gateway was science. I think. Could have been the technology. So you're an alien – a smokin' hot one, but you knew that – okay, fine, it's a big universe, had to be other life out there somewhere, but magic? C'mon. Show me."
But maybe Loki hears what he's not saying – impress me, amaze me, make me gasp and say "Wow!" – because he grins back, just a shade of the Real Smile, and says, "You are never going to let this be, are you, pet?"
"Fuck no. Ever. Never, ever. Right here, right now, we are starting over. I want everything, Loki, everything you possibly have to show me, or to do to me, or with me, whichever: bring it on." He gives in to temptation and runs his fingers through a strand of Loki's hair, then leans down to kiss him. "Whatever you can do, show me. I want to know."
Loki pushes into the kiss and savors it, and Tony feels himself stir with interest anew. But he won't let himself be so easily distracted, however incredible it might feel. Might be.
"You ask for something real from an illusionist," Loki murmurs against his lips. He opens his eyes, and they're very bright, shining with laughter. "But of course you do, because that is who you are. Well…"
He nudges Tony away just enough to push himself up and stretch, balancing on the edge of the much-abused cushion like it's nothing, as unselfconscious as ever. Tony watches hungrily, eyes racing down the long lines of him and the way his muscles shift under his skin as Loki combs his hair back and rolls his shoulders out.
"Watch, then," Loki says, glancing sideways at him, and Tony's breath catches, because that look says there's a best joke in the world and he's not – yet – in on it. "Were you listening, pet? Did you hear the titles I gave myself?"
Of course he had been. "Prince of Asgard, you said," Tony repeats, and hears himself say it, and absorbs the fact that that's something he just said.
"And?"
"Sorcerer and…" He trails off.
Loki smirks, and finishes, "Shapeshifter."
And before his eyes, the man at his side blurs somehow, like Tony's eyes have momentarily slid out of focus, all the details obscured for a brief and crucial moment, but just here. Just Loki. Nothing else.
And then Loki comes clear again, but he's –
– she's –
Tony's brain stops cold, and he can only stare.
She looks much the same; Tony would have thought she was Loki's twin sister, if he'd seen her on the street, and she would have stopped him in his tracks, unable even to chase her down and ask for her number.
She's got the same razor cheekbones that any model would kill for, and the same coloration. Her hair is still long and jet-black, with only the slightest suggestion of curls; it's maybe slightly longer, but then it's still tousled from Tony running his fingers through it, so he can't swear to it. Besides, his brain is not up to precise measurements right now.
She's a few centimeters shorter than he was, which Tony only knows because those wickedly sharp and smirking green eyes are a little lower than they were. And wonder of wonders, there's a my eyes are down here joke to be made, if only he could remember how that went.
She's elegant, rather than curvaceous; no Wagnerian Valkyrie, she. Tight and compact bare breasts beg to be touched and enveloped in a single hand, and a flat stomach leads Tony's staring eyes down to narrow but feminine hips, with that lovely curve, and a trail of down tempting him lower.
"You wanted something you could touch, I believe?" she says, and hell, that's Loki's smirk to the life, just on fuller lips and backed up by that same accent. Her voice is just a few notes higher, settling in what Tony thinks of as a low and pleasant alto.
"Oh my god," Tony blurts, for lack of anything better, and she laughs.
"So I am," she asserts.
Impossible, impossible –
He raises a hand, and hesitates. "Can I?" is all he can manage.
She winds her fingers around his wrist, just where he'd gripped Tony earlier, and places that hand on one warm breast. "I want you to."
Real flesh is solid and inviting beneath his touch, perfect in every detail as her nipple peaks and hardens against his palm, and her eyes flicker closed in a shudder of pleasure.
"Loki?" Tony whispers, wanting to believe.
"Mm-hmm," she hums, ducking her head and kissing his unprotesting mouth. "This is me too," she tells him, low and intense. "No matter what, I'm always me. And I'm not nice, Tony, and I'm not gentle, and I don't play fair."
Tony runs a hand up her thigh, feeling the strength there – stronger than him, oh god, he's had this dream, and he'd woken up panting and rutting into the mattress, with nothing to do but keep going. "This is very unfair."
Loki – and she is, she is! – laughs. "Now we understand one another, then." She gasps when Tony slides a finger between her folds, tentatively and then with more confidence, unable to resist that new-familiar heat. "Oh, I don't get to do this often, but I enjoy it –"
She shifts to give him a better angle, and Tony has no will to protest when that comes in the form of pinning him down and straddling him – Loki's still taller and stronger, wouldn't he just know it.
The filthy cushions are rough beneath his shoulders and back, but Tony wouldn't trade here and now for this world or Loki's own golden one. "I really, really, really like your magic," he kisses onto the peaks of, and then into the hollow between, her breasts.
He feels very clearly the way she convulses at that, heat fluttering around his fingers – okay, that's a thing, that's a thing they're doing – as Loki bites into her lip, that familiar expression, and murmurs, "Shut up, shut up, I want to make you scream –"
And hell yeah, Tony wants her to try it, right after –
"Hey, I remembered a thing," he says, because he's an idiot.
She stares at him like she knows he's an idiot, which, y'know, she does, because this is Loki. "What?"
"No, never mind, don't stop – any second now someone's going to come check on us, I can't figure out why no one's heard all the explosions and come looking for us before now, and I want you like this, Loki, so forget about it –"
"Oh," Loki says, rolling her eyes and smirking, "don't worry about that. You sent them away for the night."
And despite his own words of a moment ago, Tony stares at her blankly, train of…not thought…momentarily derailed. "I did not."
She shrugs, which is gorgeous, especially because with her hands occupied, she has to resort to the everyday bouncing shoulders. "Well, they think it was you, anyway."
"What," Tony says, just that, because, see also: idiot.
And yep, that's Loki's sarcastic glare, all right. "Liar," she reiterates. "Trickster. Illusionist. Shapeshifter. Remember that first morning we spoke? I told you I'd make a better you than you, if I tried."
He…kind of does remember that. "So you –" impersonated me? he doesn't get to say, because Loki lays two fingers across his lips, silencing him.
"No," she says. "I take that back. I might make as good a you as you, perhaps. I could not ask for better."
At which point there's nothing left for Tony to do but kiss her, and work her open first gently, then roughly, until she can impale herself on him and fuck them both into climax, and it's glorious.
It's magic.
And it's true.
On second thought, this is definitely Tony's day.
"Wait," says Tony, sometime later. "Did we just ding-dong-ditch an interdimensional empire?"
And Loki, sprawled across his chest like she never wants to let him go, mouth pressed to his cheek in the ghost of a kiss – Loki laughs, freely and openly, that wicked, wicked laugh.
"Well," she says, voice rich with satisfaction –
"Now we're in trouble."
To be continued.
End of Act III