In which Loki devises a new strategy based on craftiness.
Author's notes: Loki giving Tony a golden apple of immortality is a fairly common trope in FrostIron fanfic, so I wanted to try my own take on it.
Perhaps none of this is real. Perhaps it is no more than a fevered hallucination, generated by his mind to entertain him in the endless blackness that is his fall; perhaps these interludes of darkness and nothingness are but brief moments of clarity before he lapses back into delusion.
Perhaps he is dead, and this endless repetition of struggle and failure is to be his afterlife. He's heard that the underworlds of mortals have a penchant for such poetically tailored torments; surely this is punishment for his sins -
(although surely, surely nothing he had done would deserve this)
- Perhaps he will be here for all eternity.
...perhaps he already has.
He understands, now. It is not enough to stymie the Chitauri invasion of Earth one time, in the naive hopes that somehow that will deter them forever. What a fragile, shortsighted view that was - to imagine that if only he changes this one thing, everything will magically be all right. Nothing will ever be all right, not so long as the Chitauri and their loathsome master are out there.
They are a stain on the universe, a putrescent plague who live only to destroy, who contribute nothing to the universe but pain and grief. They have no concept of goodness, or mercy, or peace; they will never surrender their apocalyptic devotion, not while but one of them lives.
And so, Loki reasons, they must all die.
All of them.
He will not, of course, make the mistake of going to the Chitauri homeworld in person again. If his last attempt has taught him anything, it is that courage is a foolish and pointless virtue - a self-righteous luxury available only to those who have no one else to depend on them, who have little to lose if they waste themselves. He should have known better than to risk the Tesseract to Thanos' clutches - or, for that matter, to risk himself; anyone else can die and it matters not, for they can be alive again in a matter of moments. But there will be no second chances if Loki himself loses his life. If he dies, so too the Nine Realms. Forever. He cannot allow himself the luxury of courage.
And so he will need a way to strike at them from a distance, a way to launch an attack while he and the Tesseract remain protected here on Earth. He needs a weapon. It will not be easy to lay hands on such a thing. Earth has not the technology, and Asgard is closed to him; there are some artifacts in the weapons vault that might serve, but they are out of his reach. Even if he might steal something from the vaults, the All-Father and his minions would hound Loki relentlessly unless he reset time again, and he could not take his prize with him. No, he must start from scratch, build his weapon from the ground up, and Loki has not the talent for building.
Fortunately, he knows who does.
The first step, once again, is to reclaim the Tesseract. He has no more patience for months of stealth and infiltration; yet the months he spent working with Erik Selvig are not in vain, for he knows the Tesseract's movements and locations as well as his own. It is a simple matter to intercept the convoy one night as it is being transported.
There can be no witnesses, that SHIELD and Asgard may not take it upon themselves to interfere. It doesn't surprise Loki that he no longer feels guilt for their deaths (sparing them the horror of Nithhogg's coming)(but Nithhogg will not come this time.)
What does come as a surprise is the rage he feels the first time a confused, panicked guard shoots him. These Midgardian weapons are not powerful enough to take him out with one shot - it is little more than a bruise and a trickle of blood - but even that is enough to awaken a burst of powerful, inexplicable fury that mists his vision red and fills his ears with the roar of the sea. Pitiful mortal wretches how dare they (hurt him tie him down defile him) raise their hand against him? He is Loki of Asgard, he is a God, he is (broken defeated nothing) their savior.
When the red mist subsides the guards all lie dead, their lifeless electronic eyes all burnt and shorted out, and an alarm is going off somewhere in the wreck of the vehicle. The Tesseract hums with life and light not too far away; Loki scoops it up in the shielded metal phylactery, tucks it safely away in his pocket dimension, and walks away.
The next thing Loki does is to go and take a shower, washing the blood from his hands, his arms, his hair. Once that is done, he dresses himself in an impeccably tailored tuxedo, and goes to a party.
It is September 13th. It's a date he knows well, because the first time the seasons had come around to it again, Tony had suddenly begun making a great deal of noise about their "anniversary." Loki had found the entire idea both bemusing and ridiculous - with relationships that span centuries, who has the time to remember one day out of every year? Yet perhaps there is something to the concept, after all, because twenty years later he still remembers the day that he and Tony first met.
How fitting, that this is the day they will first meet again. He has a promise to himself to fulfill, after all: that once he returned from his battle against Thanos, he would have Tony again. (He promised, he promised. ) So he smoothes the creases of his suit to sharpness, labors in the mirror to tame his annoyingly unruly hair into submission - and an illusion of smooth skin covers the rest, the dark smudges under his eyes and the little notched scars along his jaw from where the wires attached. Tony does not need to see those, Tony does not need to know.
There are many things that he has no intention of ever letting Tony know.
He drifts through the gala in something of a haze (which, at least, was true to the night as he remembers it;) with all his attention peeled raw for his quarry. When at last he spots him, working his way through the crowd with the dazzling charismatic smile of a consummate showman, Loki is careful not to let his gaze linger too directly, careful not to move too purposefully through the crowd towards him.
If he knows anything about Tony it is that the mortal likes to feel in charge, in control, gets spooked when people come on too strong. There are some things he has done over and over again so many times that they have become routine, habit - but he does not know what changes he can afford before Tony will be put off from approaching him (what if he sees, what if he knows, what if he doesn't want me any more -)
Just to be sure he casts a glamour on himself - nothing too obtrusive, just something to make him seem brighter, sharper to Tony's eyes. The opposite of his "don't notice me" spell that works so effectively to confound the careless mortals, this one shrieks "NOTICE ME" to all but the blindest of eyes.
So he waits at the bar, nursing his drink, until a smaller body slides up on the bar stool next to his, "So," a familiar voice says, dark as chocolate and rich with humor, "did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?"
Loki turns to the side to face him, smiles slowly at his one-time lover. "Oh, Mr. Stark," he purrs. "I never stopped falling."
The rest of it goes as it did before. Tony still guesses as soon as they enter his building that Loki is not human; this time Loki is ready for it, has a sweet smooth lie all planned out. He is a traveler, he explains, a researcher who journeys from plane to planet, and he wishes to collect knowledge on Earth for a while. Tony never backs down from a challenge, never turns away from a mystery, and a little hint of danger only excites him the more.
And if Loki bites down now on a tanned shoulder harder than he meant - if Loki's nails dragging down Tony's back now draw blood - well, that is no matter. It still makes Tony moan as loudly as before, does it not?
Tony still makes waffles the next morning.
For a month Loki loses himself in this, lets himself forget... everything. (It was not real. It wasn't real. It wasn't.) The steady march of time, however, eventually asserts itself, and Loki recalls himself to his purpose. He did not seduce the mortal (only) for his own enjoyment; they have worlds to save.
Temptation, not with murmured endearments or caresses that trail fire, but with the promise of knowledge. Loki weaves a cloak of words to ignite a hungry blaze within his lover, of the universe that exists beyond their earthly bounds, of the new vistas that lie just over the horizon. Tells Tony of all the wonders he has seen (carefully edited, of course; honesty is not his friend.) Drops delicate hints about a marvel that Tony might build, modeled after the great treasure of Asgard: a world-gate, a bridge to the stars.
A Bifrost.
Within a week, under Loki's careful direction, Tony has drawn up the first designs. They are rough and clumsy, a hilariously naive attempt to apply concepts that Tony is only just beginning to grasp.
It's a start.
The glass clock-face glows 2:30 as Loki pads through the hallways of Stark Tower, doors hissing obediently aside for him. Loki is not tired - he sleeps little, these days, and none of it good - but he can usually feign sleep with Tony beside him. But Tony is still somewhere in the lower levels of the tower, and to lose track of him makes Loki restless and anxious.
He finds his lover in the war room, surrounded by half-built parts and prototypes, the walls plastered with blown-up designs of their nascent Bifrost. Tony is in the center of it, his face grey and lined with fatigue but his eyes intent, flickering rapidly from one screen to the next. The cold blue light of the projected displays washes over him, striping him with light and dark and frost and fire.
Loki comes up behind him, his footfalls silent as a cat's, and slides his hands onto Tony's shoulder. Tony starts and jumps at the unexpected contact, but Loki holds him down easily enough with a squeeze of his hands. "What are you doing out of bed so late?" he breathes in Tony's ear. "Late-night inspiration?"
"Uh, something like that, I guess," Tony says with a nervous chuckle, slowly relaxing under Loki's touch. He reaches forward and flicks through a couple more electronic screens. He has a view of the power conduits up in front of him, blown up and pulled apart, and a cascade of numbers in green and red pour down the side of the design. "Something about this part was nagging at me. I wanted to come down and take a look."
"Mm," Loki says, and he narrows his eyes at the screen. "What?"
"Well, I can't know for sure until we actually build it," Tony says, "but it bothers me that there aren't any upper bounds on this oscillation cycle. There's a lot of power feeding into it, but it's not really being grounded anywhere - if something went wrong, it's theoretically possible that it could build up a high-frequency resonance arc that could spill over to physically damage to the target location."
"And this is a problem?" Loki asks, voice indifferent. He is very careful to hide his internal alarm, his sudden annoyance at Tony's perceptiveness. You fool, that is exactly the point, he snarls inside, but does not say.
"Well, yeah," Tony says with a roll of his eyes. "I mean, it's not exactly good practice to introduce yourself to a new world by setting up a Richter Eight seismic event at the landing point. Seems like it wouldn't make a good impression on our allies."
"Hmph," Loki snorts quietly. "You worry too much. I told you, Asgard has been using precisely this design for thousands of years, and they haven't managed to blow up a single planet with it yet." Technically true.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Tony says with a little shrug, but he reaches forward and flicks through the display again. "You're the stupidly advanced alien, I know, and I'm just the tech guy. But I'm an engineer, I can't help it. I build failsafes and triple-redundant switchbreaks in everything. It's just how I am."
Loki says nothing, but slides his hands forward under Tony's loose t-shirt, seeking the tender places of his skin. Places open-mouthed kisses down along the side of Tony's neck, breathing on the skin in just such a way that he knows will turn Tony into putty in his hands. Sure enough a harsh shiver passes up Tony's backbone, and he groans. "What are you doing?" he asks, voice rough.
"You work far too hard," Loki murmurs, laving the shell of Tony's ear with his lips. "And worry far too much. Let it be. Come to bed."
"Damn you're good at that," Tony mutters. "It's not freaking fair, you have centuries of experience. How do you always know just how to drive me wild?"
Out of Tony's sight Loki allows himself one sharp smile, cold and glittering as a scimitar. He knows.
And later tonight or perhaps tomorrow, while Tony sleeps, Loki will sneak down here and undo the changes Tony has made to the design, disguise and obfuscate and direct his attention elsewhere.
What Tony doesn't know won't hurt him.
wires
dark in the wires
wires burning glowing wriggling moving crawling fear
wires in the dark far away growing pulsing devouring nothing nothing loss pain grief
coming closer wires
eating burning glowing hurting burrowing sharp sharp hot hurting pain
they are coming closer standing over on his back looking upwards dark sky stone ceiling bright lights hot hot hurting blind draping cowls mouths full of saw teeth hissing laughing smiling hurting screaming hate
he fights and fights and struggles but it is no good, he is not strong enough, he cannot get free of them no matter how he tries, they have him tied down and bound in place with wires when he screams it only makes them laugh more and continue what they're doing pumping him full of poison just to see how he'll react, how fast his system can burn it out, how fast he can heal, what makes him sleepy what makes him sick what makes everything sharper brighter louder faster fighting harder break free
and now he is free he got free but he left his hands behind, they pulled off the ends of his arms like a leaf breaking off a stem, no blood no hands, he remembers how to change his shape and he is flying he is himself but he is flying, safe and free above everything.
below him an ocean of blood, the sky on fire, the water boiling, the ground crumbling as Nithhogg's bulk heaves along the horizon, and the ocean is full of people they look up at him and cry for him to help them but he can't he can't he can't because he has no hands -
Not one innocent life have you saved.
it's jan below him she's bobbing on the waves crying for help reaching for him he tried to save her he tried he tried he tried but now he can't find her, she's gone she's gone she's nowhere and he's so afraid, so afraid -
Not one innocent life have you saved, Loki.
Movement over him, hands reaching out, saw-toothed mouths and grotesque smiles, no, he is not helpless he is not nothing he will not let them -
Loki. Hey, Loki. Are you okay?
- grab his arms and drag him back, drag him down, and he will not he will not never again he won't let them no no NO
His whole body spasms as though hit with a shock, with another dose of the drug, and abruptly he can move again and he lashes out - his hands are back they move they obey him they close over yielding flesh - and Loki hurls his attacker across the room to slam into the wooden paneling with a resounding crash.
Wait...
Paneling?
"Holy shit, Loki!"
He is panting, blinking stars out of his vision, arm still outstretched from where he flung - Tony? - yes, it's just Tony, nothing else, nothing worse, not the Chitauri, not him. It's just his lover, his weak and safe and harmless mortal lover, whom he's just grabbed by the neck and thrown against the wall.
His pulse beats wildly, his hands shake - pent up energy, crackling up and down his nerves with nowhere to go. Every little movement turns threatens to turn into a wild lunge; he pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, trying to bottle himself up, to keep from spilling over. "Don't come near me," Loki hisses.
Tony is on the other side of the room, gingerly manipulating his injured arm with his good one. "You couldn't pay me to!" he retorts. "What the hell was that about?"
"I was asleep!" Loki snaps. "Why did you bother me?"
"Why did I -" Tony breaks off, looking incredulous. "You were obviously having a nightmare! I was trying to snap you out of it."
"No! No I wasn't," Loki says, denial immediate and vehement. If he admits it was a nightmare he admits (to being weak, so weak, failure) (that something happened and nothing happened he made sure of that he undid it it never happened) that there are things he is keeping from his lover. "I'm fine. It was nothing."
"Oh yeah? If it's so 'nothing,' then why the hell did you throw me across the room?" Tony demands.
"It's not my fault," Loki says. He is wound tight as a wire, every beat of his heart hammering with anger-fear anger-fear... is it dread or fury that fills him to breaking? Anger, surely it must be anger that he feels, because there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing. "You bothered me while I was asleep. You did. You made me do it - it's your fault."
Tony's head jerks back, an expression of hurt passing over his face before it is replaced with an outraged scowl. "The fuck, when did this become my fault?" he demands. "Hello, I'm the one with the cracked shoulder over here!"
"Oh, stop being such a baby," Loki sneers. The words rise easily to his lips, well-practiced after centuries of being on the receiving end of them - from trainers, from peers, from Thor. "It's barely a bump. Aren't you supposed to be the great superhero? How can you expect to fight evil if you can't take a little tumble?"
Tony sputters. "What the - I don't normally expect to fight evil in my bedroom! " he says angrily, standing up and cradling his elbow in his good hand. The side of his face that impacted the wall is reddening and swelling, and a small cut on his cheekbone oozes a few drops of red.
In short, angry motions Tony grabs a pair of loose pants from the bedroom floor and yanks them up around his hips one-handed. A pair of beat-up house shoes follow, and a thread of cold anxiety begins to work its way through Loki's anger(panic) anger. "Where are you going?" Loki demands.
Tony heads for the bedroom door, turning for only an instant to throw a scowl over his shoulder at Loki." "Somewhere in my own house where I can sleep in peace," he calls, "without being beat up by a fucked-up alien who can't even admit to his adjustment issues!"
He slams the door behind him, leaving Loki alone with the dark, the cold, and the last echoes of the dream.
He's waiting on the couch in the living room of his lover's floor when Tony gets in. The sun is setting, but Loki hasn't turned on any of the lights, leaving him half in shadow as the light blares across the wall behind him.
"I haven't seen you around for a few days," Tony says, wariness evident in his voice and his posture. He takes off his jacket and folds it over his arm, tugging loose the collar. Loki watches the light play across his features as he moves uneasily around the room, making a reflexive beeline for the bar. It's what he always does when he's nervous or unsure, something to keep his hands and eyes occupied as he thinks. Loki's soft voice stops him before he can reach for a glass.
It's been a week since Loki's nightmare, since he last slept, since he and Tony argued. In the silence of the days that followed Loki had plenty of time to contemplate the prospect of losing Tony, losing all they have built together, losing his only chance to build the Bifrost, and he has concluded that the risk is unacceptable. He cannot let Tony leave him. He cannot let anyone else take Tony from him. The fate of the Nine Realms depends on it.
"I have been thinking," is all he says.
Tony immediately goes tense, his hand stiffening mid-reach, before he very deliberately completes the movement. "Oh? Bout what?" he says. From the sound of it, he's half-convinced already that Loki plans to leave him, to end their relationship on the spot.
If only Tony knew. If only he had any idea how desperate Loki is, how much he needs Tony, not just for himself but for his plans to succeed. If only he knew how (not afraid, there is nothing to fear) concerned Loki is that Tony will leave him, cast him aside like he did in the cell that terrible day. If only he knew -
Then perhaps he'd understand why Loki must do this.
"About balance," Loki says, keeping his voice quiet, soft. "About how two people cannot be together if one is only taking while the other gives. I have asked much of you, Tony Stark, and given little in return."
Tony snorts, splashing a golden-colored liquid into a tumbler and putting the glass bottle back under the bar with a clank. "Yeah, well, I'm Tony Stark, it's understandably hard to give gifts," he says, and some of the tension has gone out of him. He fetches the two glasses and comes around the bar, strolling towards the couch where Loki still sits. "I mean what can you give to the genius billionaire philanthropist superhero, the guy who has it all?"
"Time."
With a fluid motion of his hands Loki reaches into his dimensional pocket, the one where he stores the Casket, the Tesseract. Instead, though, he plucks a round, fist-sized object from beside them, and pulls it out into the world.
It is an apple, and its bright golden skin catches the last bar of sunlight like a flame. Tony glances at it then does a double-take, staring.
"In the sacred garden at the heart at Asgard, the goddess Ithunn tends to her grove," Loki explains, turning the apple this way and that. Its shape is perfectly symmetrical, its skin flawlessly smooth and radiant. "She grows apples, you see; miraculous apples, that grant the Aesir their youth and vitality. It is forbidden to take these apples out of Asgard, of course. But I've never really been one for rules.
"Some time ago, I did a substantial favor for Ithunn - rescued her from the company of some disagreeable giants who thought to capture their magic for themselves." Loki smiles, a mixture of timid shyness and unrepentant mischief. "Ever since then, I've known of a secret way into Ithunn's garden that no one else knows about."
Tony's eyes are huge, his face open with shock and wonder. "Are you seriously offering me..." He reaches out to the apple, then hesitates, his hand jerking back in mid-air. "Shit. I don't - I don't know what to say."
"Please don't feel a sense of obligation, Tony," Loki hurries to say. (Oh yes, please do.) "A mind as brilliant as yours, a soul as brave as yours, comes along only once in a millennia. It is criminal that yours would be limited to only one mortal lifetime. You deserve more time." He lowers the apple between them, opens his hand to balance it flat on his hand in invitation. "I wish to give it to you."
Tony looks up to meet his eyes, and Loki holds them for a long, solemn moment. At last, Tony's gaze drops to the apple in his hand; slowly, hesitantly, he reaches forward to take it. The crunch as his teeth break the skin is clearly audible in the breathless quiet, and Loki smiles.
To give the apples of immortality to a mortal is an immense honor - and in a way, a gesture of trust, since it places mankind on a level with the gods. It's a gift that demands equal trust and honor in return, and that is exactly what Loki is counting on.
It's not all a lie. The golden apples of Ithunn do exist, and contribute greatly to the stamina and longevity of the Aesir (although not to the extent that they would fall as low as mortals without them, of course.) And Loki had indeed rescued Ithunn from the giants a long time ago (leaving aside the little fact that he had been responsible for her being kidnapped in the first place) and does indeed know a secret way into the grove of golden apples.
It's merely that these particular apples aren't them. They were appropriated from a local farmer's market, with a few spells cast to glorify their appearance and taste. For the better, really, since Ithunn's apples are lethally toxic to all Earth-based species. (A pity, that.)
But what Tony doesn't know won't hurt him.
And what Tony doesn't know won't hurt Loki, either.
A year after he meets Tony again (for the first time) at the party, the prototype Bifrost is complete.
It's done done, of course. Not nearly done. It's still barely a skeleton, bare and unpolished, its innards exposed to the world in an ungainly and fragile fashion. Before they can announce its existence to anyone else they'll need to run a lot more tests, to make sure that it falls within spec, that it can perform admirably without overloading or causing any kind of damage to its target. Tony talks optimistically about demos, patents, going into production. Has pestered Loki with questions about Asgard, about the Realms, about what planet they should experiment with first.
But it's complete.
The gate itself is in the form of a ring of metal, eight feet tall and the same across, set upright at the end of a long railway of metal. It had been Tony's design (he'd said something about how 'stargate atlantis was the only decent one' and Loki hadn't pursued the matter.) Large metal struts hold the frame upright and brace it in position, and a rat's nest of cables emerge from points around the circle to slither off into hulking banks of equipment cluttering the walls.
It's beautiful.
Unlike the Bifrost of Asgard, their gateway is a hybrid of Aesir and mortal magic. The Bifrost had no screens or keyboards or displays to interact with; all of its functions were built into the very walls, lacquered over with gold, hidden and forgotten. Here, the painstaking months of planning and construction and improvisation and jury-rigging and curses, sweat and blood are out in the open, plain to see. In a sense, it is his and Tony's child.
The power unit is still sitting freestand on the floor of the workshop, attached to the gateway only by a long series of looping cables. Loki forces open the casing to the power supply; the blue hum of an arc reactor greets him. With a delicate touch he disconnects the miniature reactor, lifts it from its housing, and sets it aside. Tony Stark's legendary arc reactors are impressive, for mortal magic, but they do not have the power Loki needs for this next task.
He draws the Tesseract from his dimensional pocket, exposing it to the air for the first time in over a year; it sings with joy to be free once more. He turns it carefully over in its hand, then slots it down into the socket. It slides home with a solid click that feels almost viscerally right, and for a moment Loki stares. The face of the Tesseract is square, and the reactor socket was hexagonal; how could the Tesseract possibly fit so smoothly?
But then, he knows the Tesseract is not really a cube; that is only how it appears to their limited perceptions. Like so many other powerful artifacts, the Tesseract has a semi-consciousness of its own; perhaps it wants to do this as much as he does. Loki decides to take it as a sign.
He drags the half-ton power unit across the floor, carefully deploying cables as he goes, until it is positioned in front of the gateway. This part will be tricky; he will need to use the Tesseract for two functions at once, drawing on it for a power source while he simultaneously uses it to light the way to his target. But he knows every bolt of this machine, he helped build it, and the systems respond as well to Loki's magic as they do to Tony's computers.
Loki walks back over to the gateway's control panel, steps up onto the platform, and punches in the start-up sequence. The gateway roars to life, surging with more power than it has ever known before; but Loki oversaw its specifications, he labored over every inch of the fittings and connections, and he knows that it can take it. He grips the padded rails that lead into the heart of the stargate, and pulls with mind and magic together.
The gateway spins up, brilliant multicolored light seething across the formerly blank space inside the ring. The Tesseract roars to life, wrenching open a passage of space between here and there, and the New York skyline is blacked out behind a wheeling vista of darkness and stars.
Tony's screens and displays are helpful, here, putting numbers and coordinates and axes of direction onto that vast empty gulf. They are currently viewing a spectroscopic binary star in the constellation Taurus, 268 lightyears from Earth. Blue-white B-type main sequence dwarf with an apparent magnitude of +5.38 and a magnitude +7.6 yellow G-type main sequence dwarf located 19 arcseconds from the primary. Primary solar field features are a thick Oort cloud, a large cold gas giant lurking about the fringes, an especially thick asteroid field scattered about the interior giving testimony to an especially violent cosmic history in the area. One shattered planet, barely holding itself together through the long habit of gravity, drifting through space. Inhabited.
The Chitauri homeworld.
It is strange; from this distance he can hardly recognize that broken, barren world. From this distance the fleet of warships appear as tiny glinting specks. The Chitauri's great cities are no more than crawling grey lichen upon the face of the planet, with fine lines branching out over the empty distances; imposing mountain ranges are no more than wrinkles.
Thanos' great citadel, from this distance, is no more than a child's toy, a peaked and pointed miniature inside a drop of glowing molten red.
Loki adjusts everything carefully, positions it painstakingly, using the computers to help him execute precise adjustments of millimeters that translate to kilometers on the other side of that long gap. At last, though, he has everything perfectly in place - the Tesseract singing with anticipation of making the connection across space, the gateway roaring with hurricane potential.
And then Loki activates the Bifrost.
A cascade of light pours across the universe, a thundering song of power and destruction. Properly managed it would touch upon the surface, deposit its burden, and then subside. Left to run wild, it will become a cataclysm of destruction, a symphony of shattering rock and boiling atmosphere.
Loki lets it run wild.
He rides the maelstrom of power, directing it here and there but otherwise doing nothing but to let it run its course. He wonders if this is how his brother feels when he calls the thunder, directs lightning to strike and rain to flood at his command; yet even Thor has never called up a storm that can rend the very heavens themselves and he, Loki, has. Twice now, he has.
There is exhilaration in this and there is terror, but most of all there is savage satisfaction. At last the apocalypse the Chitauri visited upon his homeworld can be returned. At last they will know how it feels, to watch their world crumble about them, to know the horror and fear and desolation of utter helplessness. Now they, too, will know what it is to be ruined.
For a very, very short time they will know it.
Loki wasn't sure how long it would take the Bifrost to do its catastrophic work, but already the Chitauri world is beginning to crumble under his ministrations. Perhaps the power of his young stargate is wilder, harsher than the Bifrost, which after all was never intended as a weapon of mass destruction; or perhaps the Chitauri's planet is so close to shattering to begin with that it doesn't take much to complete the work.
Either way, it is only about twenty minutes before the structure of the planet buckles and collapses, enveloped in an atmosphere of flame. Loki turns the lens of the Bifrost elsewhere, methodically drilling the beam from one Chitauri base across the asteroid belt to another, leaving no refuge behind. He learned much of the Chitauri's world while he was there, to the extent of knowing where all their colonies and shipyards are located, and he burns them out one by one. It is not even vengeance that drives him now, but only prudence; the only thing more dangerous than making a great strike against an enemy is leaving his heirs behind to revenge themselves upon you.
At this distance and in such a conflagration, Loki cannot see individual structures fall, cannot see any single being's reaction to the assault, but there was no time for them to mount any kind of an evacuation. They would not have had reason to expect such an assault out of nowhere, would not have been given a moment to recoup and respond. The only one in the entire star system who would be astute enough to comprehend such an assault, the only one who would have the resources to activate one of the many escape plans he no doubt had lying in wait - the only one who could possibly have survived such a holocaust is Thanos.
But Thanos, if he still lives, is homeless and powerless, for now. He is stripped of his army and his allies. It will take him some time to rebuild, and in the meantime he will be much distracted from his egomaniacal plans of annihilation. If he seeks revenge, it will not be soon. Perhaps he can even be tempted to come to Earth in person, out from behind all his defenses and strongholds, where the heroes of Earth can (perhaps) deal with him.
That is a thought for another day, though. This day's work is done.
Loki shuts off the gateway, lets the deep roar subside to a low hum, lets the multicolored blaze flicker and die down. The sudden quiet seems deafening in contrast, ringing in his ears like a cacophony of bells.
It's done.
He leans forward, resting his forehead against the cool metal frame of the control panel, and takes a gasping breath that almost feels like a sob. Catches it in his throat, wrestles it into submission, and lets go a long, steady exhale.
It's over.
He's won.
The Chitauri are no longer a threat to Midgard. They are no longer a threat to anyone. Thanos or no, there will be no invasion now. No summoning sigil dug deep into the earth and filled with blood. No portal to the underworld, no invocation of Nithhogg. The Tree will not die. Asgard will not fall. The Realms are safe.
He had no thoughts for what to do past this point; all his thoughts and plans focused obsessively on this one moment of triumph. For a long moment he teeters uncertainly between past and future, groping tentatively towards thoughts of days that he has not lived before. Perhaps - perhaps...
"Oh my God."
The voice comes from behind him, and Loki whirls around.
Tony stands in the back of the room - when had he come in, how had Loki not heard him? He is half in the shadows, completely motionless but for the rise and fall of the glimmer on his chest. His eyes are locked on the computer screens, words and numbers and bright flashes reflecting in the dark wet shine.
"You killed them. You actually just killed a whole planet. That's - that's not just murder, that's genocide." Tony hesitates, then lets out a ghastly laugh. "Y'know, here on Earth we call it genocide if you just try to wipe out a whole race of people, but you - you actually did it."
"It was necessary," Loki says guardedly. After so many years of secrets, silence and hiding, it's hard to unlock his tongue enough to explain - even now, even now that the threat is gone forever. "They would have attacked Earth. That is not only speculation, it is fact. They would have invaded, in such numbers as to overwhelm your mortal forces -"
"Then we would have dealt with it when they did!" Tony snaps in response. "In case you hadn't noticed, we Earthlings, kind of all about the fighting and retaliating against hostile threats thing. But for god's sake, not by pre-emptively wiping out their entire solar system!"
"You would not have dealt with it!" Loki snaps back, temper rising as he is provokes. Why is Tony being so unreasonable? "You are completely incapable of defending yourselves. Your mortal technology is far too primitive, your armies and heroes are far too weak. They would have overrun you in a matter of days!"
"Uh yeah, that was my 'primitive technology' that just blew up a planet, thanks," Tony interrupts, voice heavy and stinging with sarcasm. "So clearly we're not as pathetic and incapable as you seem to think."
"Yes, a device that you could only build with my guidance," Loki counters. "Tony - listen to me. This isn't the first - "
"I knew something was off about you from the beginning, you know?" Tony cuts him off, talking right over him like he isn't there. Or isn't speaking. Or isn't a person. "Something a little too... controlled, a little too hungry. But I told myself it was nothing. I told myself, an alien prince wouldn't need my money. So you couldn't be after that. I thought, maybe I'd finally found someone who liked me for me. "
"I did," Loki says. "I do. I - I needed you, Tony, there are none others like you - I needed you for your brilliance, your talents -"
"Wow, really?" Tony interrupts. "Because if this is an attempt at flattery, it's really, really, really not helping right now."
"I wanted you. I needed you," Loki insists. "But - I also needed your craftsmanship."
"My tech," Tony says. "That's what this was all about. You wanted my tech. God, and I thought Natalie Rushman was cold. All this time you were just using it, using me, to build weapons again. After all this time I swore I'd never build a weapon again, and you - you just murdered half a million sapient beings. With my tech. "
"You have no idea what outcome I just prevented," Loki says, a dark quiet undercurrent beginning to build in his voice. Perhaps Tony does have a right to be angry at him, for the deception - and what else can one expect, from the god of lies? When the truth has never wrought him anything but more pain - but - "You have no idea what they would have gone on to do -"
"No! I don't know, and neither do you!" Tony shouts, the thin veneer of mania vanishing in the furnace of rage. "They could have done anything, and you just wiped that out - any possibility of meeting in peace, of an accord, you just - obliterated their whole future! And you don't even have the grace to look a little sorry about it!"
"Sorry?" Loki hisses, anger going cold under his skin. "Why in Hel's name should I be sorry? I did this for you. All of you! You puerile wretch, I saved your life and that of all your worthless planet, and this is how you thank me?"
"Thank you? Thank you?" Tony shouts. "For dragging an alien grudgematch down to earth and then using me like a 24-hour rent-a-nuke to dispatch them for you? Because you're not brave enough to face them head-on, or not clever enough to invent your own weapons? What exactly am I supposed to be thanking you for?"
A lifetime of insults - coward, weakling, parasite - a lifetime of slights, dismissals of all his strengths and accomplishments - some do battle, others just do tricks - boils in Loki's vision now, and he tastes rage. "You know nothing - nothing about what I have done, what I have borne, to see this day - you should be kneeling at my feel, showering me with gratitude -"
"I can't believe I let you in my life," Tony stares at his hands in horror, as if they have suddenly become strangers to him. "I can't believe I let you in my Tower. I can't believe I let you touch my stuff - I can't believe I let you touch me, I can't believe I touched you. "
How dare he, how dare he look at Loki like this, the same way he looks at his hands, like he's something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. How dare he look at Loki like all the others.
"Kinda funny, isn't it? All this time I've been fighting against monsters, and I had no idea that the monster was already in my own - "
Loki's hand moves almost of its own volition, his fist clenching in red rage as blood-red tendrils of magic seep from between his fingers. His arm comes up and he hurls it at Tony, all his bitter pain, all his frustration and betrayal. Tony's head jerks back, and his eyes go wide - his hands fly up between them, and a burst of white-blue light fires from the center of his palms.
Energy meets energy, and the incompatibility results in a violent explosion that flings the both of them back and fills the room with the smell of burnt carrion. Loki recovers first - Tony is but a mortal, of course - but he hasn't even decided which direction to move before Tony's quiet words cut through the stinking haze.
"Get out," Tony says, all at once the flames gone in an icy cold. He stares at Loki, and it is like the stranger-look that haunts his dreams all over again, but a hundred times worse - for while there had been indifference, and it had twisted in his gut like a knife, never before has he seen this rage, this contempt, this disgust. "Get out of my house. Get out of my life. If you ever show your face in this tower again, I swear to God I will put you through the window."
For a long moment Loki does not move - cannot move, every muscle locked and frozen in place - but when Tony takes a step towards him, Loki jerks himself into motion. Turns in half-a-circle and steps forward into mist, blindly teleporting himself away, away, anywhere.
Loki finds himself standing in the streets of New York City, garish lights flickering and writhing all around him, surrounded by the cacophony of the city life. A car jerks to a stop inches away from him, and the driver lays on a blast of the horn mere feet away from Loki's face.
Rage bubbles up through him and Loki's hands shoot out and grab the edge of the car, hefting it up as effortlessly as if the half-ton of metal and plastic were no more than driftwood.
"I did this for you!" he screams to the city at large, the uncaring, ignorant mortals, and flings the car away from him; it rolls over and skids to a stop half on its side against the curb. The outburst begins to turn heads, draw attention, and the clamor only rises as people begin to shout and scream upon seeing him. As he strides forward they flee before him, and it is satisfying even as it fans his rage even higher. Why do they run from him? Why? Don't they realize that he is their savior?
He reaches a glass storefront and puts his fist through it; the glass shatters and crashes most satisfyingly around him. He goes down the row of shops in this manner, smashing everything that he can reach: glass plates, metal grates, brick walls. By the time he reaches the corner, sirens are wailing and the frightened humans have cleared the way for the police cars that come weaving through the streets towards him.
He has no patience for dealing with them tonight. He makes a gesture, and teleports away before they are close enough to even lay eyes on him.
Loki finds himself outside a familiar-looking brownstone building - the apartment he once had to himself, so many worlds ago, before his path ever crossed with Tony Stark's. He blazes up the stairwell and yanks the front door open, heedless of the locks and bolts that swing uselessly from its splintered edge.
Of course, this apartment is not his any more (never was,) and the mortal who lives here is just scrambling to his feet with his mouth open in outrage, reaching behind a case for some crude weapon. Loki sets a vision in front of his eyes that sends him screaming into the darkness, clawing at his face; it will last till morning, if Loki is feeling generous enough to remove it by then.
The familiar-but-not outline of the apartment does nothing to soothe Loki's nerves; he paces and seethes and fumes, worrying over his bitterness and rage like a bird of prey mantling a kill. Always, it is always like this; others get naught but praise for their piddling acts of aggression and brashness, but let Loki - let Loki move the heavens to prevent a war, prevent a tragedy, prevent the end of the world, and they call him - and they call him -
Monster.
Every light in the apartment surges to a bright white, then blows their circuits all at once; shouts and curses from far off to either side of him suggests that the power to the whole building has gone. Let them curse, let them all fester and rot in the darkness. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He doesn't.
Loki crouches in the darkness, in the middle of the floor, and grinds his hands into his eyes until he can see naught but the auroras.
What had he expected? What did he think would happen, when he at last solved this horrific riddle and averted the catastrophe he had tried so many times, failed so many times, to quell? Had he expected praise? Did he really think that the heavens would open, that Odin and Thor would come down and congratulate himself for his heroics, assure him that at last he was worthy?
Did he really think that everything would just return to the way it was in that lost, distant time - that he could walk back into Avengers Mansion to the friendly hails of his teammates? That he would wake in the morning entwined in Tony's arms and the past twenty-two years would be naught but a bad dream? That everything would be fine, everyone would be alive and happy and together and have cake?
Did he really think there would be no consequences?
It doesn't have to be this way, of course. Loki can always return to the Void, his sweetest lover, and start again. Reset time again, do the whole thing over. Tony will forget everything - all the lies, all the recriminations and betrayals - and they can start again. Next time he will be more careful, lie better, cover his tracks more thoroughly. Next time, Tony need never know...
Except - this is the first time, the first time he has ever been able to succeed. In every other timeline he has failed, again and again, until a cold poison seed in his heart doubted that he ever could succeed. In this incarnation alone has he been able to best Thanos, to destroy the Chitauri and spare the fate of the billions of lives that reside in the Great Tree.
Is he really willing to risk that, to risk, everything, just so that Tony won't be mad at him any more?
Perhaps it says more than anything else about Loki's heart, his sick shameful weakened heart, that it takes him a long time to find the answer to that question.
No.
It isn't worth it. To have Tony, to have comfort and love and acceptance - it isn't worth the fate of the Nine Realms. In this timeline alone there have been no thefts, no deaths, no destruction (save for the Chitauri, of course.) If his relationship with Tony is the price for such a bloodless resolution, then it is more than worth that price. It is the ransom he must pay for the life of Yggdrasil.
And Loki knows that, even as he wraps his arms around himself and rocks back and forth on the gray industrial carpeting of his dark and silent apartment. Wet and cold stains his face, and it takes Loki a long time to realize where it's coming from.
Tears. Why are there tears? He has triumphed. He is a hero, even if no one else will ever know. He has won.
There is no more reason to weep.
He has no reason to feel despair.
~tbc...