The healing takes a long time. The team has to hold Tony down as Loki puts blisteringly cold hands on his ruined leg, ice seeping into his skin. He thrashes and yells until his throat is shredded and raw. When Loki finally lifts his hands and backs away, his fingers are stained black. Dawn is tingeing the edges of the sky orange.
He's kind of hazy on what happens after, but when they decide to venture back into the mansion there's no trace of the smoke. Tony still has to use Bruce as a crutch, because while his leg may be healed, it has gone numb, like his foot fell asleep. He still hasn't actually looked at his leg yet since the disastrous first time, but he's not sure he wants to.
They file back into the mansion silently. Tony remembers with the appearance of the sun that they have four days now.
The team heads to the common room, their unofficial all-purpose area. As in, it's used for movie nights, pre-battle pep talks, weapons cleaning, and keeping Thor entertained with the Wii. Right now it looks as though they're using it for planning, because no one in the house actually likes the built-in conference room. They only use it when Fury feels the need to actually come over to the mansion and the team needs to look professional.
Well. Professional is a relative term when it comes to people like Thor.
Bruce dumps him on the couch and Tony melts into it. He feels grimy, and now that the house is no longer freakishly warm he's chilled and shivering again.
Tony can see the fucking SHIELD agents still outside through a window. They look pretty much exactly the same as they did yesterday—Jesus, was it really only yesterday?—which is to say they seem to have no idea of whatever hellish event happened last night.
To protect the team. Bullshit. SHIELD isn't worth the trouble and can't even see what's going on under their nose.
During his observation of lower life forms, it seems as though the Captain has arrived. Lookee doo, Steve, at the mess they've gotten into. Bruce is talking quietly with him, probably explaining this shitstorm, and Steve has his Crumply Face on again. Tony doesn't think he's seen Steve with the Crumply Face so many times in one week.
"Tony, are you okay?" Steve is kneeling in front of him on the floor, waving a hand in front of Tony's eyes, and whoops. Tony went back inside his brain again.
"Get outta my face," Tony says, without any real heat in it. He blinks owlishly.
"You're fine," Steve mutters, his face going tight again. He turns his eyes away.
Right. Last time he talked with Steve, it was on less than friendly terms. Wow, it's like they've regressed to the old days again. Pre-New York, when everything was snapping teeth and wounded pride.
"Tony. Tony." Someone is smacking his face lightly. Bruce, because Steve has moved away. "Hey. Snap out of it."
Tony blinks again and shakes his head. "Wha… what. Lemme sleep." He curls up on the couch, trying to retain some warmth. Since his leg is still pretty much dead, he basically just lifts it up and moves it into a less freezing position.
"Normally I'd be all for it, but this is a really bad time," Bruce says.
Tony nods sleepily. "Smoke. Right."
"Yeah," Bruce confirms, and looks up at Loki. "Do you have any idea what it was?"
Loki is standing tense as coiled steel near the couch, his jaw a sharp and rigid line against his pale skin. The edges of his sleeves are stained with dried blood around his wrists. Probably acquired when he was healing Tony. Why, though, is what Tony can't understand. Why would Loki agree to save him when it would be easier to get rid of him?
The only thing his sluggish brain can come up with right now is a deal, which reminds him suspiciously of a deal with the devil. Hopefully nobody sold their soul while he was out of it.
"Well?" Clint asks. He's staring at Loki, unimpressed.
"The smoke is not smoke at all," Loki says, looking at Thor, who has been silent for most of this ordeal. His gaze is unreadable. "It has a consciousness. It used to dwell in darkness and pockets of shadow where even the bravest soldiers would not go."
Loki shakes his head, a slight furrow in his brow. "But this was millennia ago. When the darkness was defeated and the light spread, such evil was eradicated. It faded away. It vanished from all memory, to be kept only in books as a side note." The last part is spat out.
"Does it have a name?" That's Steve, his arms crossed. His face has been growing steadily darker throughout Loki's explanation.
Loki turns green, green eyes on him that are impossibly old.
"It is called the Nathgir."
Thor sucks in a breath, a quick, stunned inhale.
"Brother," he starts lowly. Loki twitches but Thor presses on firmly. "The stories father told us… How did we last until the dawn?"
Loki stares at him for a beat and starts pacing. "Something isn't right," he mutters, walking with cool, practiced strides before pivoting sharply and continuing. "The Nathgir must be loyal to him. I do not… there is no other explanation."
"Him?" Steve asks sharply. "Thanos?"
Loki turns eyes like needles at Steve. "Thanos is much more powerful than you realize," he hisses. "You could not even begin—" he cuts himself off and seethes silently, breathing quickly out of his nose. For some reason, his gaze turns to Tony, heated and angry.
Tony is motionless, trapped by Loki's burning green stare, and he wants to—he wants to—
"So, what," Clint's voice breaks into his thoughts. Tony blinks rapidly and tries to clear the muddy haze that's taking over his mind. "Thanos can now control murderous smoke? Why didn't he kill us?"
"Too easy," Tony murmurs, staring at his hands. They're grimy, dirt and grease darkening the creases. "Too fast. Won't wanna kill us 'til we see the rest of the world burned."
He looks up in time to catch Bruce's grimace from where he's sitting beside Tony, and can tell that Bruce remembers that conversation from the lab as well as he does. He's going to make us watch.
Steve turns to Loki. "Well?" He asks shortly, as if in confirmation.
Loki flicks a glance at Tony before answering. Tony glares at him.
"He will do whatever you would despise the most," Loki says, eyes narrowed. "He will do his best to break you, and once you have been reduced to begging on your knees while your flesh rots, that is when he will kill you."
Natasha mutters something incomprehensible in Russian before straightening slightly. "Wonderful."
Tony looks at Loki and feels sick, because he recognizes the strange expression in Loki's eyes. It's one that speaks from experience. He doesn't know how Loki got involved with Thanos in the first place, but he guesses that it didn't start off with sunshine and rainbows. More likely it began with darkness and pain.
"Why the hell is he doing this?" Clint bursts out, speaking to no one in particular. There's a furrow between his brows and his mouth is set in an angry line.
"It doesn't even matter!" Tony bursts out snappishly. "We're all broken pieces! Can't you all see we're fighting a losing battle? We have no chance. Zero. Fucking zilch." The words are spilling out like bile now; a floodgate burst open that he can't seem to shut. "Thanos is going to wipe the world with our corpses and there's no way we can stop it, because it's the fucking Tesseract, and it shouldn't even fucking exist!"
Instantly, he has six pairs of eyes on him in varying stages of anger and shock, a united gaze that strips him to his core.
Tony is suddenly, horribly awake. He nods once, sharply and heaves himself up, leaning unsteadily on the couch until he regains his balance. Limping, because his leg is still numb, he reaches the stairs down to the workshop and hobbles down them slowly, gripping the handrail with white knuckles.
Tony types in the password quickly, falling through the doors.
"Jarvis," he wheezes, and the lights flick on immediately.
"Sir. You look… unwell. Do you require medical attention?"
"You know damn well I don't, Jarvis, you can see that my leg is fine," Tony mumbles, too guilty to actually be cross.
He steadies himself on one of the smooth concrete walls and leans his forehead against the cool stone.
Why is he such an asshole?
Tony snorts. He knows exactly why. He's an asshole because he needs to be, needs armor stronger than metal to stand against the public eye. He pulls wit and charm and cockiness around him like a cloak and uses it to his advantage.
It's when he's unintentionally an asshole that stuns him.
Well. Perhaps "stuns" isn't the right word. Tony knows he isn't innocent underneath his thin veneer of "public disguise"—far from it—but he thought that he was past spitting out barbed comments offhandedly.
Obviously not.
Broken pieces.
Right.
Tony limps over to one of his multiple desk-esque places in the workshop, dragging his leg behind him. It's numb, after all, so when he bangs it into things he doesn't really notice.
He pulls up the files on the Tesseract and a few of his sketched solutions. Derisively, he discards them, because wasn't that the whole point of his outburst? There's no solution to this problem. Practically no material invented can provide workable answer. Not to mention that he doesn't even know exactly how the Tesseract works—he's working off of vague ideas and incomplete studies. The blue holographs fade into nothing as a scream beats against the inside of his teeth. Instead, he takes a deep breath and gets back to work. It's the least he can do.
Three minutes in, he wants to tear his hair out. The fucking Tesseract.
He pulls down a 3D, life-sized diagram of one of the Tesseract missiles, and discards the casing and skeleton so that all that's left is the wiring and the core, looking like stripped bones. The exposed remains remind him of his blackout and he shifts uneasily before discarding it.
Tony pinches the core of pulsing blue energy and turns it in different angles. It's no bigger than a pea.
So a pea-sized dollop of Tesseract blue shit can deteriorate and eat away the centimeter-thick capsule of adamantium surrounding it, Tony muses. Well, fuck.
As he's examining the core, a hiss behind him signals the door's opening.
Tony spins around in his chair to see Loki standing, relaxed, as the doors close shut behind him.
"Hey!" He says, moving to stand up. His numb leg buckles beneath him and he's forced to sit back down abruptly into the chair. He settles for glaring at Loki instead.
"I'm 100% sure that Jarvis didn't give you access codes, so fuck off."
Loki wiggles his fingers, a hint of a smirk touching the corners of his mouth. "Magic," he says cryptically. "Do you really think a simple passcode could stand in my way?"
Tony stares at him for a moment, stony-faced, before he sighs and resolutely turns his back. His mouth quirks up slightly—he can practically hear Loki's frown.
"What do you want?" Tony asks, fiddling with the holograph again.
"The Tesseract needs to be stopped," Loki says, haltingly at first.
"Well, obviously," Tony says bitingly. He doesn't know what Loki's aiming at, but he can sense Loki scowling behind him.
"Unfortunately, you won't be able to find a solution. Not without my help. It's too advanced for you. For any mortal."
"I'll have you know I'm very advanced," Tony says coolly, swiveling back to face Loki.
Loki curls his lip, but he looks unsettled. "Not enough," he says through clenched teeth.
"So you acknowledge I'm advanced," Tony says playfully.
Loki looks startled for a second before narrowing his eyes. "You might as well be a flea in the eyes of the universe. The Tesseract is beyond anything that your limited mind could imagine. Without my assistance, this entire planet will fall."
"Remind me again why you're not jumping for joy at the prospect."
Loki scowls, his forehead creasing. "Must I repeat myself so frequently? Thanos will not stop with you and your world's destruction. He will hunt me down to the ends of the nine realms and beyond."
Tony flicks away the energy capsule and watches it spin through the air, coming to a stop and hovering over the table. "Yes, but why are you here? Why haven't you run off?"
Loki looks at him disconcertedly; his burning green gaze dark and troubled.
"What?" Tony asks, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
Loki simply flicks his eyes away in quick dismissal and Tony wonders when he started being able to read Loki's looks.
"Right," Tony mutters. "So what can your magic fingers do to stop the Tesseract?" He asks lightly, chancing a sly glance at Loki.
"Oh, my fingers can do plenty," Loki purrs, and Tony swallows around the lump in his throat that's suddenly appeared. "But you need to find a way to contain the Tesseract's energy, for a long enough amount of time to move it safely away from this miserable planet. You can't honestly have expected that would be easy."
Tony manages to rip his gaze away from Loki's hands and fix his view on his face. He did have nice hands, unfortunately. Long and elegant, but strong enough—
Abort mission, derail that train of thought. Right. Now.
Tony manages to push aside the mess inside his brain and focus on Loki's words.
"What the hell do you expect me to do?" He snaps, because his patience is really at a breaking point for more of this talk. "Give up and do nothing in the next, what, four days we have left?" Because it's already the middle of the morning and the hours are being eaten up in what feels like seconds.
Speaking of mid-morning, he really needs to eat.
Loki replies before he can think anything more than the word food.
"Calm your temper," he says, one perfect eyebrow raised. "I expect that you will need help." Loki gives a quick, smug grin, flashing white teeth.
"And you're offering?" Tony asks, incredulous. "Seriously? Have you been drugged?"
Loki rolls his eyes impatiently. "You were quick enough to accept my help when you were in mortal danger, the most recent example being this very morn when I healed you from a fatal Nathgir wound. Now, on the one subject that actually matters, you are refusing any assistance from me, even though you sorely need it."
"My life matters plenty. And to a great deal of people," Tony mutters. "Where else would Stark Industries get inventions as geniusified as mine? No offense to the R&D people, of course, but they don't really have what it takes."
"For a supposed genius, you use quite a large amount of non-existing words," Loki answers.
Tony surprises both of them by giving a short bark of laughter. "Alright then, Pointy, let's see what you got." He turns back to the capsule of holographic energy and flares his fingers to expand it, the spinning design now as large as a watermelon.
Loki waits for a beat of silence before settling gracefully on the table that stretches out to either side of Tony.
"Show me what you have," he says.
A/N: Hey all, unfortunately, due to complications with my beta and her schedule, the next chapter won't be posted for a few weeks. Thanks again to Ruby and to all of you guys for following this story!