"LOKI-!"

The god's eyes widen in pain, agony written on his face that not even his masks can cover, and Tony could swear for a moment his eyes flash green as he falls to his knees.

For a moment Tony can't move, frozen in place as his mind tries and fails to process what's happening.

He runs toward the cell and keys into SHIELD's system to release the lock and open the door. Sinking to his knees behind Loki, Tony wraps his arms around him as the asgardian leans back heavily against his chest.

"Dammit, Rudolph, don't do this to me," he begs quietly as tears well up, "please…"

"don't…" the god whispers, shifting one hand to rest over his. "'s alright…"

"You can't just give up!"

Loki drops his head back onto Tony's shoulder and manages a quiet sigh. "please… don' make me hate myself, l-let me go in peace…"

Tony nods, turning his left hand to twine their fingers together where they rest over his stomach, and runs his other hand through the god's hair soothingly. Trying to hold back tears isn't working very well.

"'m sorry, please don' hate me…" he begs, and coughs up blood.

"I don't. I might not agree, but I understand, and I don't hate you."

This is so surreal, most of his mind just completely blocks out the possibility of it being real. On one hand he wants to scream at the world and beg for the asgardian to hold on, but he honestly doesn't see a happy ending here. If the god wants peace, then he'll give him that much. At this point it feels like all he can do.

Slowly, pale blue starts creeping up Loki's arm and the god's breath hitches. "n-no–!" He squeezes his eyes shut, expression more pained now, like he's fighting whatever the change means. The color recedes, but only for a few moments before the god's weakening strength isn't enough to support his attempts. "no…" A tear escapes and runs down his cheek.

Tony wipes the blood from the god's mouth with his sleeve, and tries to soothe him. "It's alright… just breathe, Blitzen, stay with me."

Loki turns his head away as the blue spreads up his neck and face. His breathing has gotten a lot shallower, although whether it's from the injury or out of fear he can't tell.

"Is this because you're jötunn?" he asks quietly.

The god nods slightly. "m-monster…" For a brief moment crimson eyes meet his, and the hopelessness there shatters Tony's heart.

"No. You're not a monster," he says firmly, "you understand? I don't care where you're from, or what color your skin is. You're awesome either way." Tony holds back a sob, not wanting to make the god feel any guiltier than he already does, and speaks quietly enough that the cameras won't pick it up. "Loki, you're pretty much my best friend… you're a good person, okay? Not a monster, at all."

No. That's the expression that destroys his heart.

With a tiny, sad smile, Loki gently squeezes his hand and closes his eyes. "'s alright, tony, i want this… 'm not scared anymore."

He looks more peaceful now—despite the pain etched on his face—than Tony's ever seen him while he's awake.

He can't hold back a sob as the god wrenches the knife from his chest with a sigh of relief.

"thank y–…"

Without the blade to slow the process, Loki sinks into unconsciousness before he can finish the sentence.

*'*'*

Thank you, Tony, he wants to say. Thank you for listening. Thank you for giving me a chance, for caring.

Thank you for staying.

Black fades to grey before he can, though. He lets his body relax against the mortal and gives in peacefully.

*'*'*

Tony shouts abuse at the SHIELD paramedics for taking so fucking long (they'd showed up about the time Loki decided done was done and yanked the knife), because right now all he can feel is anger. At everyone, and everything, because this wasn't supposed to happen. He's still holding the god to his chest, clutching his hand, while they do their best work to at least delay the inevitable, and when Loki is lifted up out of his arms to be rushed to the emergency med wing he jumps to his feet and practically growls. "If he doesn't survive, neither do you. Are we clear?"

"We'll do the best we can."

"Do better."

The Avengers appear in the doorway looking various degrees of confused and freaked out, Fury close on their heels.

"We need to talk."

Tony looks him over quickly, trying to judge his current mind-set, and nods. "I think we do, yeah." Fury turns, and he follows him to some empty breakroom nearby.

The director turns back to him, arms crossed, and giving him the one-eyed suspicious look that would, were his emotional hard-drive not currently full, probably have made him uncomfortable.

Right now it just makes him pissed.

"I'm starting to think there's something you're not telling us," Fury says in an infuriatingly even tone.

Normally he'd flop down into a chair or something at this point with a flippant remark, but he's not letting the balance of power shift. "Now why does that sound familiar? Oh, right. Because you keep all your dirty secrets hidden until you try to nuke a fucking city."

"You know that wasn't us, Stark."

"Doesn't matter, I don't care right now. I'm going to tell you how this plays out."

"And how's that?"

He crosses his arms, meeting Fury's eyes and holding eye contact. It used to give him the creeps—not anymore. It's probably the adrenaline. "First of all, this conversation never happened. This was just a chat about what I gleaned from Loki while I acted like his buddy. Only you and I know about it."

The director raises an eyebrow. "Continue."

"Loki gets full medical attention, not whatever half-assed shit you probably give people on your most-wanted list. Better than you'd even give your top agents—I'm rich; cost doesn't matter."

"Ignoring the fact that you sound seriously compromised, why should I agree to help the same man who's tried to destroy the city twice?"

"Because," Tony says, staring him down, "if anything happens to him, I will bring your world crashing down around you."

Fury doesn't seem as shaken at that as he should be, simply replying calmly, "I think you overestimate yourself, Stark. How exactly do you think that you can take down an entire government agency? That's not the same thing as blasting your way out of a cave."

"Oh, no." He smiles. "It's much easier. Are you trying to get me to give the whole bad-guy speech and reveal all my plans?"

"Are you the bad guy?"

"Considering I'm trying to save someone's life and you're sitting here wasting time, I don't think so. Here's the deal: if Loki doesn't make it, I can make you find out just how little you're getting from taxpayers' dollars. I can wipe any and all of your domestic and offshore accounts clean of cash, I can expose all your secrets, and I can tell the world the truth about all the ways you're breaking international treaties—all with literally a single word to Jarvis.

"There's also the fact that if I want to, I can take down whatever's connected to the internet within two minutes, anything with a computer chip in seven and a half, and everything—I mean everything in the world—electronic in eleven.

"You shouldn't be afraid of Loki, or Hydra, or the big bad wolf, Fury—you should be afraid of me."

There.

That's the hint fear he wanted to see.

Tony turns to leave, then pauses. "And don't even think of trying to touch me, because Jarvis is always watching. Aren't you, buddy?"

"Of course, Sir."

The director glances up at the intercom system.

"Oh, yeah, forgot to tell you that I hacked your systems. Again. Seriously, at least make it a challenge for me next time; I'm getting bored. Anyway, Jarvis can easily fuck shit up if anything happens to me." He smiles cruelly. "And if you tell anyone about this conversation, or even hint that something's wrong? The helicarrier drops out of the sky as dead weight."

Without another word, he turns on his heel and leaves.

The moment he turns the corner off that hall, the anger drains into determination.

To be honest, what he said was made up of ninety percent lies—the internet thing he could do, although it's impossible to do it that fast at this point because the wiring for a lot of shit is physically incapable of moving data that quickly. He can definitely fuck with their funding, but not enough to completely bring them down… Fury doesn't know that, though, and has never been able to figure out how all his stuff works, so at least for the time being it should be enough to scare him into getting the best medical care available.

He heads for the emergency care section of the base—every SHIELD facility has one in case an agent is hurt too badly to make it directly to a proper facility, and it's ten thousand times better than going to the ER in a public hospital. The doctors are specially trained, there's no overcrowding, and their equipment is top-of-the-line.

Impatiently he waits outside the door, tapping his foot, until someone comes out. "What's the scoop?"

The doctor shakes her head. "We're doing what we can, but the chances of him surviving are pretty low. Even if he does make it through surgery, there's a good chance he'll be comatose. Possibly for the rest of his life."

"He won't be, he's a fighter."

"It's not that easy, Mr. Stark. We have no idea what we're dealing with—his physiology is fundamentally different than ours, and we don't know if human blood would be compatible for a transfusion. Depending on how you define it, he's already died twice. I won't say there's no chance, but it's very, very low," she warns.

"I'm ninety-seven percent sure that if you stick our blood in him, he'll end up with a pretty bad allergic reaction. I don't have enough data to say for sure, but those aren't great odds. How bad does he need it?"

"He's lost a lot of blood, and the chances are pretty low he'll make it without a donor. Even on autotransfusion he's deteriorating pretty quickly"

Tony runs a hand through his hair, trying to focus enough to think things through. "There's no way in hell we're going to be able to track down a jötunn quick enough. I've got one other option, but zero way of knowing if his body will accept it. Give me some probabilities here, doc."

"With a transfusion and a lot of luck figuring out his body as we go, maybe a six percent chance of survival."

Shit. "Without?"

"One or two."

"So it's probably better to risk it, then?"

She shakes her head. "I honestly don't know. If you decide you want to try, then we need it as soon as possible. Seconds count here."

Tony nods. "Right. I'll be back." He takes off for the break room at a sprint.

The other four Avengers are sitting at a folding table covered in a well-worn red tablecloth that reminds him of Thor's cape, and Fury is noticeably absent.

Speaking of the áss, though…

"Thor, buddy, need a hand real quick. You game?"

"Of course," the blonde-haired god replies, standing.

Before they can make it past the vending machines by the door, Steve calls after him. "Stark, we need to talk."

"Ah, yeah, how about after I'm not covered in Loki's blood?" He attributes the fact that he's not having a panic attack right now to shock. What happened hasn't sunk in yet.

"That's exactly what we need to discuss," Natasha responds, voice serious. "Is there something you're not telling us?"

Fuck everything, he hates life. "About what? I mean, I haven't told you the specs for my suit, but there's no way in hell you're getting your claws on those."

"About Loki. You two are awfully friendly, and now you're pretty freaked out over his death. We need to know if you've been compromised."

The anger is back, and it lights a fire in his chest. "Compromised? You're worried about me being compromised? Fine, here's the rundown: Loki likes me because I don't take his shit, and I act like I care. That's why it was so easy for me to get him to talk, because I'd already figured that out during the invasion. As for why I'm freaking out, was nobody watching the feed, or does just nobody care about the fact that a guy committed suicide?"

Screw the fact that they've been living together for months, even if some Hydra agent had done it he would have cared. Especially if they were as scared as the god was.

"You guys? You're soldiers, warriors, assassins—you chose this shit. Me? I'm just some guy who crawled out of a cave with a magnet in my chest and suddenly got dragged into a war. So sorry that I can't just sit back and watch people die without feeling anything, but I think it's kind of funny how the guy in the metal suit is the only person here who isn't a robot."

"Stark," Clint tries to cut in, "he isn't even huma–"

"Neither is Thor, does that change shit to you? Look, Loki's an asshole, but he fucking bled out in my arms. I can't handle that, okay? Loki's a person, you know, not just a fucking 'he'. Let's go, Thor." He's dragging the god by his cape out the door before any of them can get their jaws off the floor. Seriously, the fucking bastards have had it coming ever since Steve called Phil a soldier, and they shouldn't be so surprised that he blew up at them.

Not stopping to chat, he interrogates Thor on the way to the med wing.

"Okay, seriously, did you really not know that Loki is Laufey's kid?"

"I was never told of such a thing, no."

Wow. Awesome Parenting 101. "I'm guessing you were watching the tape, though?"

"Aye."

It's all he can do to not just punch the áss in the face. Or stab him. Stabbing sounds fun.

Holy shit, he's starting to sound like Loki. Although if this is what dealing with Thor was like for him, he can see why the trickster acts the way he does.

"Whatever happened to the whole 'He's my brother no matter what and i'll never stop loving him' gig? Where the hell were you when he was dying?"

The áss shuts his eyes with a sigh. "I didn't know what to do. Every time I think that maybe I've finally found him, I lose him all over again. I was frozen in place."

Oh. Okay, that's not what he was expecting. Thor's generally not the sort of guy who's too scared to jump into the fray. And maybe he really is broken up about what happened, even if he's not showing it much.

"Important question time: now that you know Loki's jötunn, do you still consider him your brother?"

"Always," the god replies without hesitation.

"What would you do if I told you that he was still alive?"

His head snaps up from where he'd been staring ahead at the ground. "What?"

"It's bad, Thor, and probability says he probably won't make it. They've got him in surgery right now, but he knew what he was doing. He had damn good aim—that's where you come in."

"Anything I can do to aid in his survival, I will."

"How would you feel about him actually becoming your blood brother?"

The thunder god looks confused. "By what means?"

"He's lost way too much blood, and needs a transfusion. Trouble is, human blood isn't compatible as far as we know, and I don't think they have great cell signal on Jötunheim. We have no idea if yours would work, but it's our best shot if you're willing to donate a bit."

"I know little of your medical practices," Thor admits, "but if there's a chance it would save him then I'm more than willing."

"This is one of those times when the 'thank god' expression becomes literal."

The expression he still can't figure out returns—it's not curious, exactly, or searching, but it always makes him feel like the god knows more than he lets on.

After a few minutes, his suspicions are confirmed.

"You were lying to the Avengers."

"What?"

"About not seeing him between the chitauri invasion and today."

Dammit, he was kind of hoping Thor wouldn't catch on, at least for a little while longer until he'd figured shit out.

"I've suspected it for a couple of your months now. I wasn't sure at first, but now I have little doubt that you know each other better than our friends think."

"Okay, first off, your friends. I don't think I've become quite that buddy-buddy with you guys yet, considering that so far this is the first conversation I've had with one of you that hasn't ended with me wanting to break something. What tipped you off?"

"At first it was your mannerisms—I believe you may have picked up a few of his. Your speech, too, although less so."

He raises an eyebrow. "You're a lot more perceptive than Blitzen makes you out to be. Or would you be Blitzen, since there's the whole lightning connotation? Whatever, beside the point. Sorry. Do continue."

The god laughs quietly. "See? Your phrases match his."

"That's a little freaky." He waves. "Hey, Doc, found our donor. You set up?"

She's changed into scrubs (dark red ones, which actually look kind of cool, for scrubs anyway), and judging from the mask he's guessing she just came from surgery. "Yeah, come on in."

The woman leads them into a room that is weirdly not cave-like for SHIELD, with cool grey walls and darker tile. There are a couple comfy-looking chairs around a coffee table, and she tells them to have a seat.

"Wait, is this a break room too?"

She nods, and he proceeds to complain about how for people saving the world, the team get treated like summer-camp kids. Throw 'em some glittery construction paper and safety scissors, and they've got the whole package.

Thor seems both confused and intrigued by the whole thing, laughing when she asks if he has any problem with needles, and not even remotely squeamish with the whole thing. The doctor tells Tony that she'll be back in ten minutes, unless something happens, and to keep an eye on Thor just in case. Having started the process and not able to rush through it, they go back to their previous conversation.

"Did he teach you to fight?"

Tony scowls. "More like threw me around the room and kicked me while I was down. The number of times he's choked me unconscious can't be good for my health."

"He's always believed in learning by experience."

"I've gotten that. Still got bruises from last time."

The god looks at him searchingly. "So when you were humming earlier…"

"Yeah, I heard it from him. Wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been, considering you were in the room."

He's not handling this fantastically, and he knows it, but the uncertainty and inability to do anything is driving him up the wall. Well, not literally, because he's sitting on the cold white tile in the cold white hallway thinking that he's going to go insane from lack of visual stimulation. Working on company projects doesn't help, and personal ones are impossible because he's so distracted, so he's essentially stuck here twiddling his thumbs until something happens. Please dear god let it be good news.

"Hey," a voice says gently from his left.

Looking up he finds Steve, back in normal-people clothes and for once not looking at him like he's a waste of perfectly good air. "Hey," he replies dully.

It's finally starting to sink in, what happened down in the cell, and he just feels numb.

Maybe if he had thought faster, put more work into things and not sat around on his ass like SHIELD would never find out; Loki wouldn't be half running on machines right now. They could have gotten out okay.

Steve sits down beside him, crosslegged, and looks toward where the floor meets the wall opposite them. "I'm sorry, for how we reacted earlier. It was uncalled for."

He nods.

"How are you holding up?"

"I–… Every time I look down, all I can see is his blood on my hands. Literally. I can't bring myself to wash it off, though." Tony stares at them where they rest on his lap. "I should have seen it. Thinking back, he kept showing signs that he was going to do it, kept talking like it was the end. Not in a going-back-to-Asgard sense. Like he was going to die on Earth. I should have stopped him."

"I keep forgetting that you weren't trained like we were," he admits. "That you haven't spent your life doing this."

"Yeah." It takes him a while find any other words, because everything is just blank. "…what if I'd just paid a little more attention, just thought a little faster? What if I could have talked him down?'

"Don't think about the what-if's, Stark. What's done is done. All that does is make you feel worse."

"Mhmm…"

He tries not to, he really does, but all he can do is keep running through scenarios in his head and finding dozens that probably could have worked if only he hadn't been such an idiot. The silence is awful, but at least the captain seems to realize that talking won't help much right now. Admittedly, it's kind of nice to have the support, even if it's Steve and they're just sitting here—is that how Loki felt when they'd sit together after something had happened? He hopes it was at least this comforting, if not more so.

If this had been someone else in surgery, one of the Avengers or even one of his friends, Loki would know what to do. He always seemed to just know. Like the night he'd woken him up from the nightmare, and let him know that finally he wasn't alone in dealing with that. He hates that the god's been through that trauma too, but at least together they have someone who can actually understand how scarred they are.

There are a couple stray drops of the stupid white paint on the stupid white linoleum from whenever the walls had been touched up, so he picks at them and flicks the chips across to the other side of the hall.

What feels like years later, one of the double doors swings out and the doctor who's been talking with them returns. He climbs to his feet, desperate to know but also scared out of his mind that it's all over.

"So?" he asks, although it's mostly a demand.

"I have good news and bad news."

Shit. That's always bad. "Talk."

"Well, the good news is that the blood was at least semi-compatible. His body didn't handle it like a human's would, but it's seemed to take. Miraculously, it seemed to be enough to get him through surgery, but he's still in critical condition. He definitely needs to stay on life-support, although we don't have anything to compare his vitals to and have no idea what his baselines are. It's a wonder he's even made it this far—most people couldn't have survived that. He managed to get the perfect angle in one go to do the most damage, although thankfully since he went between his ribs the knife couldn't twist much without significant force."

Tony is well aware that it wasn't luck on the god's part—he has enough experience and strength to know where to make an efficient kill.

Dreading the next question, he has to force it out. "…and the bad news?"

She wastes no time sugar-coating, which Tony is thankful for, because someone might have gotten strangled otherwise.

"He stopped breathing, twice, and the amount of damage he did is severe. It's just a waiting game to see if we've been able to stabilize enough. You have to understand that while we've done the best we can, the likelihood of him waking up is almost nonexistent. You may wish to say your goodbyes, because he might not make it through the night."

It's hard to say which is worse—holding the god while he was dying, and doing everything he could to keep him alive afterwards, or knowing that he's just barely holding on and there's nothing he can do.

"Can I see him?"

A nod. "Be careful of the equipment, but you may go in."

Whatever he'd been steeling himself for, it wasn't this. To be honest, he'd been praying to whoever was listening that he'd go in and see if he could make the god smile again. Or at least talk to him.

A heart-rate monitor beeps consistently, too loud for the small room, and the ventilation unit hums in his peripheral as it feeds oxygen to aid the god's breathing through a cannula. Blankets are pulled halfway up his stomach, not high enough to hide how his chest is swathed in bandages over both the initial wound and the incisions from god only knows what surgery they'd done. He doesn't want to think too hard about that right now.

Two IV bags hang from a pole on the far side of the bed, the lines leading down to hypodermics taped to his forearm where the god's knife once resided, and the sheer number of wires and devices in the corner, even though they're not all being used, freaks him out majorly.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

He should have seen the signs.

He should have stopped him.

Loki's chest rises and falls shallowly, and his eyes are closed. Not that it doesn't make sense, but he wants to talk to him, to try to figure out what to do.

The god's skin never returned to its normal tone, staying jötunn blue and marked with raised, sweeping lines. Somehow the form still fits him, and Tony has a hard time understanding why the difference makes him a monster. The Nazi comparison is really the only thing that helps at all, but it's still fucked up. Either way, Loki is beautiful and he refuses to consider him less a god because of his heritage.

This is all so fucked-up.

Half of him refuses to believe it's real.

Being exceptionally careful not to knock anything, Tony lowers one of the rails and sits beside him on the bed, just watching him and trying to make sense of things.

"I'm so sorry, Loki…" He reaches up to brush a few stray hairs away from the god's face. Tony doesn't know when that motion became so natural to him, but it has, and he just needs some sort of familiarity right now. Pepper is across the country at a meeting in California, Happy with her, and Rhodey is in DC working on government shit. Bruce is somewhere in the middle-east last he heard, although he's been keeping quiet and out of the way, so tracking him down would take time… the only other friend he has is living on borrowed time, comatose, beside him.

Supervillains he can do—beating people up is easy.

This is just terrifying.

"I don't know if you can hear me, Donder, but if you are… please." His voice breaks as he speaks quietly to Loki. "Please don't give up, okay? I need someone to do science with, I need someone who can tear me down and show me my place when I start going overboard, and I need my friend back, dammit! So don't you dare give up on me, because I swear to god I'll drag you back from the dead just so I can kill you myself."

He sits with the god until he can't hold his eyes open, then pulls a chair over and sits like Loki did when it was Tony in the hospital, laying his head on the mattress.

Sleeping only works for a half hour or so before he wakes out of nightmares, and for the first time since the god had fallen unconscious in his arms, he breaks down into not-so-manly tears.