Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers, or any of the characters used in this fic. They all belong to Marvel and their respective creators. I only own any original characters that I choose to include, as well as any original plot ideas.

Chapter 14: Son Of Lies

A/N: I'm feeling much better now. Having a few days off and no assignments due until after Spring Break really makes me feel good. Yeah, I have kind of a long break. Nothing due until March 15. Very happy with that.

"You want me to do what now?"

The chair promptly stopped spinning as Tony reached for the table and anchored himself to it. If Bruce and Steve had to carry him out of the room, then so be it. He was not going to go along with Fury's batshit insane ideas. Particularly those that involved him suiting up and investigating the sewers beneath the streets of New York. Not only was that absolutely filthy, not to mention the fact that he'd smell for days afterward, but there were miles of tunnels, which meant gallons upon gallons of waste.

He gripped the edge of the table even tighter and continued to glower at Fury, ignoring the glances and snickers of the others as they mocked him. He was Tony Stark, for God's sake. Not a plumber, not a waste technician, or whatever the hell they were called. He, the infamous playboy of Malibu and worldwide billionaire extraordinaire was not about to be called upon to search through the city's shit in hopes of finding a wayward Chitauri alien or two.

Why, if the royal pain in the ass hadn't killed the one that Thor had found, then he wouldn't be having this problem. Tony cursed the god and his own miserable fortune.

"You were the one openly complaining when Loki offed the thing," Bruce said, and the Iron Man could have sworn that, between fleeting glances, the scientist was mocking him. "It's only fitting that you be the one to investigate. Well, and you do have the super cool suit."

Tony made a face at the man and scoffed. "Or we could have you turn into the Not-So-Jolly Green Giant and tear open the sewage plant. That'd save us a lot of trouble." A shrug. "And by 'us,' I mean 'me.'"

"You're doing it," Fury snapped, and the billionaire's head turned to the door as it opened and Pepper walked in carrying a bag, that did not contain their bouncing bundle of drooling joy, in her hands. "Now."

His jaw dropped and he played at betrayal as she tossed the thing across the room. It landed in his lap with a heavy sound, and Tony cringed. "My suit?! You found my suit?! How?! I... I–"

Pepper crossed her arms, smiled the way that she always did, the smile that just did things to him, and sighed happily. "You just aren't very good at hiding things, Tony. At least, not anymore."

Biting the inside of his lower lip, Tony frowned, knew exactly what she meant. He'd done a shitty job of keeping secrets from her after that lovely little three months in the desert, and had failed in nearly every attempt since. It seemed that, after his return, he'd decided to glue himself to her hip, so to speak. Not a wonder that now, all these years later, Pepper knew just how his mind worked. Like one of the brilliant folks who had figured out the Rubik's cube in under fifteen minutes.

Granted, his idea to hide the Mark VII suit in the dryer before the meeting, having correctly assumed that Fury would send him to do some sort of dirty work, probably hadn't been his best one to date.

"Better suit up, Stark," the director said, and Tony couldn't believe that there was genuine amusement in the man's voice. "You're going swimming."

# - # - # - #

Surreal. Among all the words in his extensive vocabulary, some of which were colorful phrases, that was the only one that Loki felt was suitable enough for the situation. The rooms were wider than he remembered, the ceilings higher, the great archways of the windows more open. The light was blinding, the heat of an Asgardian summer nothing short of suffocating. Loki wouldn't have been bothered in the slightest were he to have been left to sit alone in a cold, dark little cell. It certainly would have been preferable to being seated in the great hall, forced to watch as servants whispered to one another and paraded a ridiculously lavish meal before the three of them. The only upside to all of this was that Odin had not dared to show his face.

He leaned forward, shoved the plate away and rested his chin on the table. This didn't make any damn sense. Who, in their right mind, would have welcomed home a traitor, a murderer, say that he had been missed and sweep him away to the sort of quiet celebration he had always preferred? She must have lost it in the time he'd been away, he thought, and spared Frigga a passing glance. Her eyes were shining again, the way that they had when he'd kept her occupied for hours on end just to prove that he'd mastered his first book of spells. With every word out of his mouth, the queen had seemed to glow brighter, until he thought that she'd outmatched the sun entirely.

Thor, quite naturally, was thrilled by the fact that he was being fed, and, for a moment, Loki nearly mistook him for the lumbering Volstagg. He scowled at the thought, hoping with everything that he wouldn't come across Sif and the Warriors Three. Their last few encounters had been anything but pleasant. Particularly that little scuffle in the crumbling temple of Jotunheim. Dear Sif had not been kind enough to control her temper, stay her blade, eager for his blood. He had the scar to prove it.

"Are you not well?"

Stunned, Loki sat upright, turned his head and stared at her. Why did that matter? Why was she doing this? Was it all some kind of game? Had she been sent by Odin to lull him into a false sense of security? Would the Allfather come for him once he dropped his guard, kill him?

The legs of the chair scraped hard against the floor, the thing falling back with a loud sound as he moved away and towards the window, breath caught in his throat. It was a good long drop from here, straight onto the stone of the palace grounds, the gardens. He could jump, tear a hole in space and drift away into the Tree, escape Odin's grasp, his fury, his punishments. Escape his lies. As the God of Mischief, a king among insects, he would not be bested again by an old man awaiting death.

But what of Thanos, the Chitauri? What if he fled Asgard, ran into them? They would not be quite so kind as they had been the first time, and that wasn't saying much. They'd been horrible, monstrous, kept him in the dark that, at one point, he had come to fully embrace. But in those long months, being pulled out of his skin and forced back inside again, the darkness had come to frighten him, and how he had longed for light, to feel the blaze of the sun, see the blue of the sky. Where had she been, he'd wondered? Sitting within the warm comforts of the palace, no doubt. And why, why hadn't she come?

Her touch was like fire, cutting through skin and melting the ice in his veins. The queen was gentle, the personification of perfection, and it was like a poison to him, drowning in darkness as he was. He couldn't think straight, couldn't even see her. There was only the phantom, that of his nightmares, the one that had washed away the woman's face, stolen her voice, her body, tried to wrap those lithe fingers of hers about his throat. So he turned, and, in a second, lashed out, felt himself flying, falling, wondering where in Asgard the breath in his lungs had run off to.

The sudden ringing in his ears was Thor yelling at him from above, the ceilings looking higher than the moon behind his head. She just stood there, over the thunderer's shoulder, a hand pressed to a gently forming red mark upon her cheek. Had he just done that?

"Answer me!" Thor bellowed, and gripped him by the arms, pressed him hard into the wall. He must have knocked the table over in his anger, Loki thought, for the thing was lying on its side, everything scattered across the floor as the servants hurried about. The thunderer shook him, and Loki grit his teeth. "Now!"

This was just not happening. They were really in his head now, running everything, driving him far and beyond mad. None of this was funny. It was downright terrifying, but he couldn't help finding this incredibly humorous. Thor, on the other hand, did not, and made sure to prove it by socking Loki right in the mouth.

"That... won't help you..." His head lolled, hit Thor's shoulder. "They... are coming. First Midgard, and then–"

"You could have stopped it! You could have said something sooner! We could have fought them together! We can–"

"They are all going to die anyway!" Loki snarled, and slapped his brother's hands away, pulled the other's legs out from beneath him with a boot, shoved him to the floor. "All of them! And why should I try to stop it?! They are only mortal! They mean nothing! We are gods, Brother! But that does not make us heroes..."

"Because this is your responsibility!" Thor shot back. "Midgard is your responsibility! You brought this madness upon them! Upon all of us! Upon yourself!"

It was just a planet of dirt, of fools. Of self-obsessed mortals with nothing to live for. Why should Thor care what happened to them? Of the billions of people in existence, he should have had reason to save but the handful that had wormed their way into his affection. Jane Foster, the Avengers. His friends. The rest of them should have been disposable.

Loki made a face of disbelief. He didn't feel the ice harden in his hand. "Would you really die for them?"

"This is not about them. But you. I would die for you."

It wasn't supposed to be this way. He wasn't supposed to win their hearts, have their forgiveness. They were supposed to shun him, treat him as the devil, the shadow on the floor. To vanquish him with light, watch as he faded into nothing amid the brightness of the sun. He was no prince of Asgard, no Son of Odin, of Frigga, but a traitor. He wasn't supposed to be welcomed home as the lost boy, the prodigal son.

Loki scoffed. It must have been a trick.

"Stop lying to me, Thor. Have you forgotten?" He leaned in with a smile, venom on his tongue. Or perhaps it was blood. "I am the God of Lies. And you dare to think, for but a moment, that you can fool me?"

He would have struck Thor down, fulfilled that violent thought that had played in his head again and again through the years. But she caught him by the arm, twisted the ice from his hand, and pulled the two of them apart. Thor skidded even further across the floor, and Loki fell back into her waiting arms. He'd forgotten that she wasn't just a woman, a mother, but the warrior queen of Asgard. She'd held her own against Laufey and the Frost Giants. He'd been foolish to think that she couldn't stop their quarreling as well.

"Who is coming?"

Loki did not want to say. "It matters not where I hide," he whispered, and felt Frigga's hand cool against his cheek. "He will find me."

"Who would harm my boy?" she said, and turned him around.

His eyes could only trace the pattern of the fine golden thread of her gown, and Loki grit his teeth. "I failed..."

Her hand moved beneath his chin, and, for the first time in year the god sincerely looked at her. "Who?"

"Don't let them take me," he breathed, and the shadows untamed by the queen's stories were darting about his chambers again, trying to whisk him away. "Please..."

# - # - # - #

"Oh, God this is disgusting..." Tony groaned, and shoved his head back through to the surface. He crossed his arms. Not even three seconds breathing sewer air through his mask, and the man had a sudden urge to ditch the suit and vomit on the sidewalk. "No. There is no way in hell I'm looking through that place. I don't wanna smell like..." Flipping up the mask, he made a face and motioned towards Steve. "...ass."

The Captain furrowed his brow, turned to look at the others as they snickered. "Did... Did he say just say that I'm an ass, or that I smell like–"

"Just do it," Natasha said, looking distant and ignoring the coffee in her hand. It had since stopped steaming, and she hadn't taken a drink since they'd all met up fifteen minutes earlier. Which, in Tony's mind, was a great big, flashing sign that insisted something had gotten screwed up between her and the archer. Who, as everyone had surely noticed, hadn't been around since Thor had broken into the freezer aisle for his brother the ice cube. "You can give yourself a chemical bath in the lab later."

The billionaire sighed and leaned forward against the concrete, still lingering on the ladder that would drop him into the sewer. "So, what? I'm just supposed to crank up Alice In Chains and suck it all up?"

They just stared at him. That was the only downside to being in his forties. Nobody understood references to excellent music anymore. Hell, all the kids were about Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift these days. It was only thanks to dumbass games like Guitar Hero that anybody of the present generation still knew how to sing the chorus to The Rolling Stone's "Paint It Black."

Now burdened with that disappointment, Tony groaned again and flipped the mask back over his face and held his breath as the eyes lit up. He was going to kill them all for this later on.

"Have fun!" Bruce laughed, and Tony threw him the finger.

"You guys owe me!" the Iron Man shouted back as Steve dropped the manhole cover back over the top of the ladder.

Tony had never been more pleased with his intellect, with having developed rocket boots for the suit, for he found that he could actually hover just above the filth that lined the tunnel before him. The arclight whirred and lit the dark space like a Christmas tree in a toy shop window as he went, the display in the eyes of the mask rather dull as there was nothing of interest, save for a bit of faded graffiti on one of the walls, for him to focus on. Must have been part of a dare, he thought, to come down into this shithole just to spray paint a load of bull on the tunnel.

"Sir," Jarvis quipped, and Tony found the volume of his music dropping drastically. "I'm picking up a mass collection of vital signs twenty meters to the East."

Turning, Tony frowned, noting that the tunnel, so far as he'd seen, only went straight. The hands of the suit scraped against the wall as the display changed to look through what must have been at least three feet of solid concrete. Illuminated in blue, a distant figure ran down a maze of corridors, sending waste sloshing up the walls on the opposite side, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the billionaire was poking around.

"Well," he sighed, "at least it'll be interesting now. Jarvis, lead the way."

Dimming the lights, Tony began playing through scenarios in his head, hoping that the least exciting of them would be what was true. The first thought had been what they were all afraid of: An army of screeching metal aliens hiding out in the underbelly of New York. But, the more he mulled it over in his head, completely lost in Lala Land as Jarvis directed the suit through the maze, the more Tony came to believe that it was just one of a bunch of dumbass kids sluffing school.

Eventually, his music faded out entirely, and Tony found himself standing on a metal grate before a door with the typical "Authorized Personnel Only" label slapped upon it in big black letters. The handle was wet and the door ajar, he noted, and grimaced, sincerely thankful that he wasn't going to be touching it with his bare hands. Tapping it with an elbow, it opened slowly, the first room of the underground sewage plant dark and filled with the sound of humming machinery.

"Stark! Did you find anything?" Steve said into his headset, and Tony jumped.

"Oh, God!" he breathed. "You scared the piss out of me!"

He could almost see the disgusted look on the Captain's face. At least that was one victory for the day.

"Yeah, that's great... Now, what did you find?"

Tony shrugged, moving the arclight's beam across the room as he walked. And then he remembered: they could only hear him. "Not much. Just a maze of rank tunnels and a door to the treatment plant. There was a guy down here, but–"

"A guy? What kind of–"

"Well, if you'd let me finish..." Tony cleared his throat, and the Captain said nothing. "There's a fair bit of graffiti down in the tunnels, Cap. Probably just some lousy punk trying to lead us on. And I'm not picking up any readings aside from rats, so–"

"Sir?"

God, not Jarvis, too. Why did everyone love interrupting him so much?

"Not now, Jarvis. Anyway, Cap, I'm coming back–"

"Sir?"

"What in the name of God is it, Jarvis?! Can't you see that I'm trying to–"

The words that would have come out of Tony's mouth were cut off as he flew forward, slammed hard into one of the pipes that hovered on the far end of the room. The headset blared with the sound of Steve's voice as he barked orders, told the others that they had to get to the damned plant immediately. Tony groaned, the display in the mask flashing with a damage report and warning of an attacker. Apparently, whoever had hit him had not only scraped paint off his suit, but had caused him to crack the arclight in his chest. Great. Pepper was going to have a bloody heart attack.

"Okay, you little shit," he muttered, and the boots pushed him up into the air. "As if hide-and-seek-tag through the sewers wasn't bad enough, now you've really gone and pissed me off."

Sure enough, the asshole who'd whacked him was a kid, a boy, in a dark hoodie. He couldn't have been older than fifteen. And, of course, he held in his hand a length of rusted pipe that only made Tony angrier. This was one of the reasons he couldn't stand kids for extended periods of time. They stopped being cute and chubby after a while, and thought they owned the fucking world.

"I really should pound the snot out of you," he said, and gave little thought to the fact that, for threatening a minor, he could end up in a mess of a lawsuit. But he had money and lawyers for that kind of thing, thank God. Tony motioned to the boy, flipped the mask up. "Show me your face, kid."

There was no answer, even as the boy moved the pipe from one hand to the other, swaying from side to side as though this were some kind of bitchin' dance party.

"Come on, kid," Tony said again, and moved towards him, taking the hood in a hand. "Show me your damn face."

He pulled, felt his heart slam against the metal of the suit as it threatened to jump out of his chest. The boy, it seemed, was not a boy at all, but one of those fucking aliens. Tony stumbled back as the thing shredded its clothing and whacked him again with the pipe. He hit the ground hard, eyes wide as the Chitauri lunged at him, brought the pipe down towards his head just as Tony snapped the mask shut over his face again. It screeched, and Tony raised a hand, blasted it right in the chest and sent it flying back across the room. Where the hell were Steve and the others when he freaking needed them? Now, he thought as he flew up in an arc, would be a great time for the Captain to show up and bash the bastard with his ridiculous shield.

It followed Tony about the room, tried to drop him as it raised the pipe in an attempt to stab him. At one point, the end of the object caught the arclight, broke right through the glass and sent it scattering across the floor. Swearing under his breath, Tony shot to one corner of the room and raised both his hands to the beast, the suit whirring as the little rockets began to pop out of their hiding places.

"Eat this you, sonofa–"

Gunshots rang out as Natasha appeared at the top of the stairwell, firing shot after shot into the Chitauri's head. When it turned, the Captain's shield came out from behind her, taking its legs out and sending it to the floor in a writhing heap. Tony breathed a sigh of relief and dropped, let himself fall back against the wall as the assassin jumped over the railing and pinned the thing down.

"Everything good in here?" Bruce quipped, sticking his head around the corner of the doorway. Good call, waiting until all the shit had hit the fan. Wouldn't be such a hot idea for the green rage monster to come out of his shell inside a sewage treatment plant.

Tony groaned loudly in response. "What the hell... took you guys so damn long...?"

"You cut off the connection!" Steve snapped. "How were we supposed to know where you ended up?! Or if you weren't dead?!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Tony muttered sarcastically, still trying to catch his breath. It was like dropping out of the sky all over again. "I didn't ask to be whacked in the head with a goddamn pipe!"

The Captain fell silent and Natasha kept murmuring to herself, a distinct snapping sound coming from her as she fastened handcuffs to the Chitauri's wrists. If he'd been feeling up to it, Tony would have made a comment about how the metal guy really liked to play rough.

"Director," Steve said into his headset, "we've got him. Looks like Stark was right. We found another one."

Tony whined as Bruce came to pull him to his feet. Fury was probably going to make them scour the underside of the entire city now. "We're not gonna sleep tonight, are we?"

The scientist gave him a wry smile and clapped him on the shoulder. "Not a chance."

Now, in case any of you were wondering with the Chitauri bit, they are shapeshifters, so I thought it suitable to include that in the story.