Another unbetaed chapter, but longer than the previous ones. I hope you'll like it^^

Thank you for your comment!

TsundereTwin: I'm sorry if school is annoying you. Hope you can have some relax. You wanted t reunion between Loki and Tony, so I hope you'll like this chapter^^ Thanks for your comment!

chocokekskrueml: Sorry about the cliffhanger, but this time I wasn't evil, so here it is the new chapter! About Pepper, you'll see :) Thank you for your comment!

Teska: Sorry, I feel a little guilty, but at least you didn't have to wait for too long for the update :) Midlife crisis Steve is almost a headcanon to me XD Thanks for the comment!

Chapter 13: A nameless fear

For a moment, he didn't know how to react.

His brain was stuck, it froze as soon as he had reached his bedroom like a computer with too little RAM, only it didn't have any reboot options.

Loki was there, a naked body on the floor in the same bedroom where, only a few weeks before, he had proposed an alliance and his words had echoed in a too deep silence, only to be met by a refusal. Now the god was there again, but he was laying on his stomach and wasn't moving. His wrists were chained and his dirty body and unkempt hair showed even too well what had happened to him, but the detail that had captured Tony's gaze was his skin: a deep blue, the same color he had just caught a glimpse of during his days as his hostage, before he had found himself facing the deep contempt and self-hatred in those green eyes.

And that time Loki had arrived with his chest broken and a chunk of his side missing, oozing blood, more similar to a corpse than to someone who was still alive, and yet the true color of his skin hadn't passed his elbow and had disappeared after a few moments.

He launched himself at him with a sudden fear crushing his chest. Pepper was talking, he recognized her voice, but everything was overwhelmed by the sound of his own heart beating too fast. The god was covered in so much blood that he couldn't understand if his wounds were still open or even where he was wounded.

He brushed his dirty hair away from his face, searching for a sign that he was still alive, but as soon as he tried to touch his neck he pulled his hand back with a hiss. Loki's skin seemed like it had the same temperature as liquid nitrogen. It was cold, maybe even colder than ice. And the air in the room was cold too. Only then he realized he was shivering, even if he didn't feel the cold, or at least not enough for him to care. Not in that situation.

Loki wasn't answering.

"Come on, it's not the time for jokes."

With a painful anxiety devouring his stomach, he started looking for his pulse again, ignoring the burning. Then, when his hand was just becoming numb, he felt the pained, broken version of a breathing coming from the god and he suddenly discovered he could properly breathe himself.

He wasn't dead. He could save him.

He turned around, remembering the presence at his back.

"Pepper, help me. He's still alive." He didn't wait to see her following his instructions and returned to look at the unconscious god again. "Hold on, Rock of Ages."

Pepper was at his side a moment later.

"Who is it? Do you know him?"

"It's Loki. Help me turn him on his back, but it's better if you grab a sheet, first, because his skin is colder than ice."

Pepper tensed and retreated immediately.

"What?!"

He sent her a distracted glance, before cursing silently, because Pepper didn't know, she couldn't understand what it meant for him to have the dying god at his feet, in his room.

"Loki. The little shit with leather pants and horned elm that now is our ally. Or at least I think he'll be if we manage to save him."

Using the sheet to shield his hands as he suggested, he tried to turn him on his back, careful not to worsen his conditions. Loki was as heavy as he remembered him to be, and he searched for Pepper, but his CEO had already taken a step back, without even meeting his gaze, keeping her wide eyes focused on the unconscious god.

"Jarvis, call Bruce and Steve."

"No! I'll take care of him," Tony yelled, while struggling to move the god.

When he managed to roll him on his back and caught a glimpse of his chest, he had to stop breathing or he would gag. From behind his back, Pepper made a strangled sound. Tony could see the god's bones in what was left of his chest: ribs, sternum, fragments of bones of strange aspect, like they had melted and then solidified again in the wrong shapes. The rest of his chest was made of blackened flesh, damaged lungs and burnt skin.

Given his conditions, Tony almost couldn't believe he had seen him breathing.

"Damn, Rock of Ages, just heal yourself! Where is your scepter?" He looked around with helplessness torturing his chest, because there was nothing in the bedroom, just the body of a dying god. "Jarvis, I want a full body scan."

"For an accurate scan he should be in your lab, sir."

"I don't care, for now I just need his vitals and his general conditions. We'll think later of the broken bones and similar wounds."

"Tony..."

He dared to shift his attention from Loki to Pepper. His CEO was so pale she seemed about to faint. Not even the hand she was covering her mouth with managed to hide how horrified she was. As much as Loki's ruined body had upset her, though, the worry inside her eyes was all for Tony.

"I promise we're going to talk about it as soon as we can, but now there's no time."

She swallowed with another strangled sound and many different emotions crossed her gaze, before she nodded. It was all Tony needed to find his balance again.

"So, Jarv, what's your diagnosis?"

"Loki's chest is covered in fourth-degree burns, it is probable that both of his lungs has collapsed and that his internal organs had suffered severe damages. Judging from its angulation, his right leg seems to be broken in at least two different places and his limbs present several stab wounds. His internal temperature is getting lower and has already affected the whole room. This helps stopping the bleeding, but his metabolism has slowed down so much that I fear his vital functions are compromised, by now."

"Bullshit! He's a god, he doesn't have human vital functions."

"I considered mister Odinson as basis of comparison," Jarvis replied, voice that almost sounded apologizing.

Tony closed his eyes with such strength his temples started throbbing. Jarvis was wrong, he had to be. When he opened his eyes again, he ignored the clench beneath his Reactor, he ignored Pepper's eyes on his nape, he ignored his own trembling hands. Instead, he returned searching for the god's pulse, because he would never surrender like that.

"Look at me, Loki. I know you're not so easy to kill."

But truth was he didn't have the slightest idea of what to do.

The god was dying, his body was too damaged for Tony to know how to start his attempt to put him back together and this time there wouldn't be any Reactors to do the miracle.

Pepper's hand appeared on his shoulder, a soft touch that brought a silent consolation, like even his CEO knew that there were no hopes to save the god. Tony almost hated her, for a moment.

He closed his hands into fists to refrain himself from doing something impulsive, like driving her away or grabbing her hand to look for comfort; then he tensed, without breathing, his disbelieving gaze focused on what should have been a corpse.

Loki had opened his eyes.

Pain.

Again that sharp, unbearable pain.

But it wasn't the only thing he felt.

In his hand, there was something belonging to him, a warm shard that carried both a reassurance and the memory of a scorching hot flame – a flash of pure panic, accompanied by a laughter, mockery and threat at the same time, the solitude of his cold, dark cell, where he could have a few moments of truce before torture started again, but he couldn't accept it, he needed to believe he wasn't there anymore.

There was a smooth surface beneath his back, another detail that hit him like a wrong note in the agony which was overwhelming his every thought, preventing him to truly wake up. And he could hear a voice, even if its words reached him in a distorted sound that held no meanings.

A safe place.

While in his cell, he had used his only glimpse of lucidity to focus on that desperate request, and for a moment he let himself hope, because if there was smooth floor under his devastated body and someone was calling him, instead of using pain to make him regain his consciousness, he couldn't be still trapped in the worst of his nightmares.

Or maybe the nightmare was still trapping him, maybe it was exactly what he was experimenting. A more insidious nightmare than the usual, because it was torturing him with the possibility of safety only to take it away from him as soon as he really started believing it.

Again the voice reached him among the disordered fragments of his mind, an agitated sound where he could find more worry than threat.

He tried to breathe, forcing his burnt lungs to grab the air he desperately needed and again the pain pierced him, threatening to throw him into a dark abyss from where he wasn't sure he would be able to emerge again. He struggled to fight against it, second after second, but he was so tired...

Tired to fight for every breathe, to survive in a world where he would receive only pain. And yet, he had to know.

He opened his eyes.

"Loki!"

His name. Not one of the usual idiotic epithets. Not something offensive.

He blinked, to free his eyes from the dark shroud that was still trying to turn off his sight and his consciousness. Above him there was his mortal.

He was expecting Asgard.

He focused on Stark's face, making it his only thought, the only thing that mattered in his reality. Keeping his eyes on the familiar features helped him ignoring the abyss that was just a breath away.

"Loki, look at me. You're safe, here. We're going to take care of you."

We?

There was someone standing next to his mortal. A blurred shape, long hair, too fast breathing. A woman, but not Romanoff. If only he had had some kind of control on his body, he would have tensed.

Stark turned his head for a moment, before focusing on him again.

"It's okay, she's Pepper, she's on our side."

The mortal placed one hand on his shoulder and it was so warm it burnt him. In a distant part of his mind, an alarm started ringing, but it was too far away, too confused for him to realize what it was about.

He used all his will to move, he didn't know if to push the hand away or to place his own on it, so that he could have something tangible to hold on to, the proof that the mortal was truly there with him. But he was too weak and the best he could do was to move his arms a little, with a rattling sound.

His wrists were still chained and as soon as he was hit by that thought he suddenly felt the wall standing between him and his magic, a wedge separating him from his powers, as vivid as a scar and as painful as a newly inflicted wound.

The Tesseract shard was still in his possession, hidden in his fist, but as exhausted as he was, he would never be able to use it if he didn't free himself from the handcuffs first.

"Chains," he wheezed, with voice so weak and rough that it sounded foreign to his own ears.

Stark brushed against his trapped wrists.

"You mean these? I'm taking them off, now."

He managed to nod, but that movement and his attempt to talk had exhausted all of his energy. With pain still devouring his nerves, he fainted again.