Then

"I love you too." Tony replied. "And it's going to be okay, everything is going to be okay." A shadow fell in Loki's room like what had happened in the living room.

"Tony?" Loki had asked as Tony shoved him inside the panic room.

"It's going to be okay." Tony said again and again and the shadow outside became a bright force that exploded, and the energy pushed Loki back against a wall and he slid to the ground.

Dazed, Tony's words rang in his own head.

It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay.

He had watched as the panic room door closed and he's last thought before he was pulled away by the light, atom by agonizing atom was that Loki would please be safe. And then everything went black.

When he came around in the metal bunker the first thought was that he was alive, he's second thought was where were his friends and last came Loki but that did not mean that he was anywhere less important than the thoughts that rummaged through Tony's mind all at once.

He felt something on his face, just a touch and he flinched at it and hurled himself away and went straight into the metal corner of the bunker and he winched at the pain as he banged into the metal wall.

"Tony, it's okay, it's me." Tony recognized the voice as Steve and he reached out and touched his hand and held it tightly.

"Are you okay?" Tony's eyes adjusted to the shadows and dim light in the room.

"Define okay." Thor said from the other side of the bunker.

"Is this Asgard?" Tony asked and Thor shook his head grimly. "It's no a place I recognize." Thor said offering Tony no comfort at all.

"So where the hell are we?" He asked.

"I don't have the slightest idea."

In the corner was Bruce sitting on the ground, his arms was wrapped around his legs and head was pressed against his knees.

"Is he okay?" Tony whispered to Steve.

"He hasn't said a word since we got here. He's just been sitting there." Natasha answered before Steve could. And Tony wondered why that was and then Bruce laughed, laughed until his shoulders were shaking.

"Bruce?" Natasha asked. There was a tremor of fear in the room that rippled around as Bruce's maniac laughter continued.

"I'm sorry." He said eventually and there was that laughter again in his voice. Laughter that didn't belong there at all. He lifted his head from his knees and for a while he simply stared at them all. "It's just that, for the first time in I don't even know how long, I can't hear him or feel him."

"Who?" Natasha asked but she already knew who he meant and what he was implying. The Hulk. The Hulk was gone. Just like Thor was unable to wield Mjolnir or even feel her. Just like Steve no longer felt like a super soldier. He felt like an ordinary man worst of all he was feeling the illnesses through his body return slowly but very surely. The illnesses that had ravaged his body when he was young. And it scared him.

"The other guy. I can't feel him." Bruce said then the laughter died within him. And he was angry. "This is like a sick fucking joke, we're screwed we don't know where we are, we've been attacked and for the first time in a long time I feel like a normal human being, I feel like myself." Bruce shook his head and dropped it to his knees again.

"Bruce we're all…" Natasha started to say that they all felt it, the sense of loss of power that had been ripped from all of them the moment they had been taken.

"Shut up. Save it. This is what I always wanted and now I got it." Bruce said. "It's true what they say be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." He would have given anything right then to be able to Hulk out, and storm his way through the cage that was holding them all hostage. Storm out of there and find Loki.

"Bruce?" Natasha whispered.

"Shut up!"

"Nat leave him alone…just let him be." Clint pleaded with her and she reluctantly said nothing. She rested her head against Clint's shoulder who had not said much since they got taken.

"Did you manage to get the kid to safety?" Clint asked Tony. That was all on his mind as he waited for Tony to regain consciousness.

"If you mean I shoved him into that panic room yeah I did that." Tony said.

Tony could drive himself insane now when he thought of the options in hindsight. He played the same scenario over and over again. Agonizing over things none of them could change. Loki should never have been there. They were so naïve to keep him there when they should have run and hid him somewhere, anywhere but there in there home. The moment Odin had come into their lives why had they not run? Why had they not hidden Loki? Why did they wait for a fight to come to them?

Now

They didn't know who had taken them. Their captors had offered no bargaining. Their captors never spoke. And more importantly no one had come from the outside world to rescue them and it was starting to feel difficult to keep track of time there in nothing but the dark dungeon that had become their home for what already felt too long.

But there's a light, it's the only light inside the room that is bright, it's small, it's blue and it flashes between blue and darkness. It doesn't always work, no, sometimes there is just darkness, and that is when Tony is most scared when that light goes out, and when it stops flashing it scares him. He feels like a mad man. The light is the only thing that is keeping him sane. The light on his wrist is the only thing that gives him some kind of purpose. Some kind of comfort.

"Stop." Steve ordered Tony, and Tony knows why Steve wants him to, it's driving him insane. And Steve hates seeing him like this.

"It's the only thing that is telling me he is alive." Tony said. "It's the only thing that is telling me that he is out there and that he is okay." The light had started flashing days after they had been taken, Tony had not known how long it's been, is it days or weeks? Time doesn't seem to move here where they are, they just seem to exist and then there was the light that had suddenly started flashing.

Hope.

Loki.

If he was pressing it he was alive. If he was pressing it he was okay. If he was pressing it, he needed them. He needed Tony to live up to his promise. And there wasn't a single dry eye in the room when they watched it that first time.

Loki wherever he is, is pressing it more frequently, and Tony thought of his empty promises.

"I'm going to make it up to you." He tells the Iron man bracelet as though he is talking to Loki himself. "And then I am never leaving you alone again you little punk." Tony's voice broke when he says the word punk. And he is glad for once that they are all in this shadowy room. That nobody can see the tears that is forming in his eyes.

"Loki is going to get home schooled now." Clint said with a genuine laugh.

"Loki is not going anywhere ever again." Natasha added speaking of a future they are dreaming of and are at times very unoptimistic about. But now there is lightheartedness in the room but it is quickly diminished.

When Steve coughs. It's a wheezing coughing and they all listen to it. It's been happening more and more frequently. Tony first thought it had been the room they were in that was cold and damp. But he has become aware that Steve's once superior genetically engineered human form was coming apart. And if help didn't come soon…

Tony didn't want to consider the implications. He reached out and massaged Steve's back.

"Do you think Loki is with Pepper?" Steve asked once he got the coughing under control. He was eager to keep the lightness in the room going even though his breathing was becoming so difficult.

"I hope Loki is with her or with Jane, god forbid if he is with Phil and Fury." Natasha said feeling a headache as she thought of Loki on the hellicarrier. "But then again, I just hope Loki is with family. With people he knows and will take care of him."

"Loki will be fine, he's a tough kid." Bruce said and that was the most they had heard from Bruce in days.

The room that had been dark and gloomy, the room without doors suddenly appeared to have a door. And the door swung open and beyond it there was an open galaxy of a infinite dark sky and stars. They were floating they all realized and they had never felt it. Never felt the movement at all as they had been adrift amongst millions upon millions of stars.

And through the opening he appeared.

He had been listening.

He had always been listening.

"Loki?" Thanos voice sounded dead. He felt or showed no emotion. This monstrous beast. "I agree he is a tough child. My old advisory who last when I had words with him had let me down, and I heard he had died. But you brought him back." Thanos said looking only at Thor.

"I did what needed to be done." And it hit Thor like a wave that everything that had happened to them and to Loki had, had nothing to do with Odin. It was Thanos who had been behind everything.

"We do foolish things for love do we not?" Thanos said. "Even when that loves is not repaid I know a thing about that."

"You desire death!" Thor yelled wishing he could move and fling himself at Thanos but he was being held back by a force beyond his reckoning.

"And you loved one who kept death very busy over the millennia, so aren't we, you and I alike?"

"We have nothing in common Loki's changed he's different." Thor said.

"Yes he has changed. He is a child, he is young and innocent and knows nothing of the ways of how this world works, how it truly works."

"If you hurt him." Tony threatened.

"You think you gave him favor and defense by not telling him that men like I exist. You think that you have given him a coddled life when in truth all you have ever done is strip him of what he was always meant to be the, the one who rides suffering and death into this world." Thanos eyes again traveled to Thor. "If you knew what you know now that your beloved brother is no more than a vessel for devastation would you still have brought him back to life."

"Yes." Thor replied without question and Thanos smirked.

"Sentiment." Thanos whispered. "For every beginning there is an end, and who knew that the end would rest in the hands of a child."

"Leave him alone." Tony said realizing how helpless he truly sounded.

"Or what?" Thanos asked amused. "All you can do is watch. Like you have been watching that bracelet on your arm Stark. The one that will tell me where Loki is and how I can find him."

Tony looked at it. No. No. Shit. Thanos knew. Thanos knew what it was. What it could do and Tony slipped it off his hand and intended to stomp on it, break it until it would be of no use. But he was slow and Thanos was quick. And in the blink of an eye it was in Thanos hand and he smiled a smile that would send terror through any heart.

Thanos closed his eyes and smiled.

"He is a resourceful child I have to concede." Thanos opened his eyes. "A resourceful child that is off on a fool's errand."

Thanos moved back slowly and the door he had come through slowly disappeared again along with him and Thanos smiled drifting in the galaxy of stars as he stroked the Iron Man bracelet.

"Of all the places Loki." He spoke to himself bemused. "Jotunheim."

A/N I was holding onto this chapter for a while it was basically just dialogue amongst the Avengers and I was two minded about adding it but it's been a while since we have heard from the avengers and those guys have been hanging around in a prison cell outer space the whole time, while Loki has done all the hard work, how rude.

Okay they got no powers and Steve's bad health is back so they are off the hook and Loki has to hurry up and now Thanos is coming because um yeah Tony that great Iron Man bracelet he shares with Loki which I realized is kinda a bad idea to hold onto when it can be used to track Loki and it's going to be fun! I'm evil I know.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Thanks for reading! And take care!