I'm so sorry for the late update, I just hope the chapter won't disappoint you. This time, it's a longer chapter focused on Loki and Tony only.
Thanks a lot for the comments and the favs, you're awesome! And special thanks go as always to my darling beta cara-tanaka for her help.
Skyray: Exactly, Loki isn't a fool. But Natasha is maybe the most dangerous mortal among them, so Loki will watch his back. Thanks for the comment.
Guest(s): Thanks for your enthusiasm, I'm so glad you like my story!
Chapter 33: Truce
Judging by his panicked stare, Stark hadn't found it particularly pleasant waking up while he was exploring the metal in his chest. The mortal met his eyes in a moment of absolute silence, allowing him to recognize the horror that filled them, while his weak hand rushed to grab Loki's wrist, digging his nails into his flesh.
Then, Stark jerked away and bolted towards the door.
Ignoring his attempt at fleeing, Loki looked down at his own arm. If he had been a mortal like Stark, he would have had a bruise by now, where the Avenger had grabbed him.
He allowed him to almost exit the room before acting. Without standing, he snapped his fingers and immediately Stark found himself dragged back to the bed by a solid chain that had appeared around his wrists. He struggled with all the small amount of strength that his mortal, weak body possessed, but finally he was chained to the bedpost with his hands above his head.
Loki smiled, looming over him. As soon as he reached for the contraption in his chest, Stark intensified his useless struggles.
"Don't touch me!".
He was panting, his eyes wide from panic and all his composure lost in the blink of an eye. To see a man like Stark without his controlled mask, who always hid his emotions with layers of irony and arrogance, was more intimate than seeing him naked. It was elating and Loki didn't want anything more than to prolong this moment of weakness to discover every fear, every emotion, every frailty of the mortal who had begun to be a constant presence in his thoughts.
Ignoring Stark's curses, he caressed the metal with two fingers, hearing the mortal's breath suddenly stopping while his whole body tensed in refusal. And they both knew that it wasn't for the fear of rape, but for a different kind of fear.
As soon as Stark began breathing again, with a frantic, terrified rhythm, Loki covered the blue light with his palm, feeling his too fast pulse and basking in the sensation of the mortal so defenseless beneath him.
You are mine, Stark. Mine is the power to touch you, to gift you with another day of your life or to negate it. I have become the god of your little mortal world.
When he slowly withdrew his hand, the chains around Stark's wrists disappeared.
Immediately, the mortal retreated further back on the matress, pressing himself against the headboard trying to control his shivering, but didn't dare give it another shot at running away
Smart choice.
"There is a limit to what a psychopathic alien god can or cannot do with his prisoners, you know, you sadistic son of a bitch?", Stark growled while he pressed an arm against his contraption like he was trying to protect it from him.
Loki smiled, showing his teeth. He was in such a good mood that he didn't even take notice of the offense in Stark's words - but he didn't grace that question with an answer either.
"It seems a very important part of you. It is strange, since it does not actually belong to your body".
"What do you know about it? Aren't you an alien from outer space? Maybe it does belong to my body and we Earth people are all built in this way, with a huge piercing between the nipples that mustn't be touched by anyone".
The mortal was still extremely tense but it seemed like he had recovered enough from his fear to show him his hatred instead of his panic.
"Agent Barton did not have anything like that", Loki replied.
For a moment, Stark's eyes were crossed by a horrified flash and his foolish suspect made him smile again.
"Neither he, nor the other mortals he had hired, were particularly ashamed of nudity. They changed clothes in my presence. And not one of them had this contraption in their chest. Furthermore no Midgardian was immune to my scepter. Apart from you". He closed the distance between them, his eyes focused again on the metal in Stark's chest. "What would have happened if I had torn it from your body?".
Stark recoiled instantly, pressing his arm to his chest more firmly. Loki could see his will to remain silent but also his doubts and fear behind his hostile expression.
Maybe he thought that if he didn't answer, Loki would take it out for real – and truthfully Loki was tempted by this thought, by the curiosity that always made him test objects and people alike for the pure pleasure to see their reactions.
"A brutal fall for the stocks of my business, more than what should have already happened, a breath of relief from Fury and tears of desperation from my fans", Stark finally answered.
Loki relived again the fire in his chest while his life was extinguished one second at a time. It was what he had lived inside Stark's mind and it all had happened because the piece of metal was missing.
"Who managed to take it from you?".
The mortal flinched like he had struck him.
"How do you know?".
"From your eyes when you woke up. It was clear that you already experienced a similar situation".
And there was a hole in his chest, while he crawled beneath Stark's skin, and his heart was pumping blood and pain into his veins becoming weaker with each beat, and the bitter taste of bile in his mouth was burning his throat when he desperately tried to keep on living and the betrayal that had just happened hurt his already wounded chest.
"And what makes you think I want to give you an answer to that? Telling my secrets to the psycho who keeps me prisoner?". The mortal almost snorted. "Not a good idea, sorry".
After the last few days spent in apathy, Stark seemed like he had returned to himself enough to react and rebel, and Loki liked it almost as much as he liked provoking him and figuring out his secrets.
He didn't want to punish him for his arrogance, at least for now.
"Because I want to know it", he replied, lifting a hand to show him some green sparkles of magic coming from his fingers. "Last time you did not want to answer my questions it did not go too well for you, do you not think?".
There was silence while the threat of a second mind violation hung between them. Only after a couple of minutes, Stark moved his eyes away from Loki's fingers to meet his gaze.
"I'll tell you if you tell me what you were doing in Schmidt's base".
Loki didn't even think to refuse: Stark asked him for some useless information and he appreciated the fact that, in exchange, the mortal would cooperate. After spending the last few hours trying to heal him, he really didn't want to use magic on him again, despite his own threats.
"I accept, but you will answer first".
For a moment, Stark looked surprised, like he hadn't expected him to agree. Then, he laughed bitterly.
"In the end, you've already seen it, haven't you?".
"Then you will not find it difficult to answer me".
Stark shook his head, before his laughed died and his face became an emotionless mask.
"It was Obadiah Stane", he began, saying that name with the same intonation Loki would use when pronouncing 'Odin' or 'Thor'. "He was... you can say my fatherly figure, or the father I've never had". His face showed an hint of boredom. "Family dinner, pizza, Christmas presents and lectures for when I skipped my duty and so on. And in the end he revealed himself to be a person who was even worse than my father since, well, at least my father never tried to kill me". The irony he had used to cover his wounds so skillfully disappeared, leaving a hard stare. "Your turn".
"I sensed a power similar to the one belonging to the Tesseract, so I teleported there to see what it was", Loki answered immediately, but not fast enough to cover his own thoughts.
An absent father who ignored him and a man who took his place only to betray Stark later, tearing out from his chest what the mortal had in place of his heart.
Even such simple words were enough to force him to look inside himself, like in Stark, he saw those parts of him he had voluntarily left behind.
"What happened to Schmidt and how's the Tesseract involved in all of this?".
"It is not your turn yet, Stark", he growled at the mortal.
His eyes lowered until he focused again on the blue light on the mortal's chest and reached for it with his fingers.
"What is this strange contraption?".
This time, the mortal tensed but didn't flinch, nor did he recoil. He only stared at his hand like he wanted to be sure that Loki wasn't about to touch him.
"A gift from Obie, from when I still thought he was a good guy".
Loki snorted, withdrawing his hand.
"This is not a real answer".
Stark hardened his stare.
"Long story short, he paid some men to kill me but they recognized me and thought I could be more valuable alive than dead, so I found myself in a cave with a chest full of shrapnel that was about to reach my heart. I don't know how your anatomic knowledge is, but metal shards going through your heart? Really bad thing. Luckily, another prisoner managed to implant an electromagnet powered by a car battery into my chest to keep the shards still and away from my heart. When I healed a little, I built a safer generator than a car battery. It's an Arc Reactor and it's unique, since I'm a genius and no one else in the world is able to replicate it. And you won't touch it again".
There was truth among Stark's bragging and some words whose meaning escaped him, and he looked at the metal on the mortal's chest with growing interest. It possessed the same shade of blue of the lights coming from his armor.
"So this is a creation that allows you to live and at the same time gives you the power to use your armor?".
Stark grabbed the sheet and used it to cover his legs and crotch, like he had realized only then that he was completely naked.
"Exactly". He crossed his arms against his chest. "And with this, you owe me two answers. You can answer my two questions from before".
"If Schmidt is the mortal with the red face, then he dared to defy me and I destroyed him. The Tesseract had fused a part of its energy to his hand. Thanks to that he could use an infinitesimal part of its power and defeated you", he replied with a bored voice, before thinking about Stark's memories, wondering how the mortal could have survived. "How did you manage to escape when you were a wounded prisoner?".
The mortal couldn't hide a smirk.
"They wanted me to build weapons for them, so I built the first version of my suit. For me". A hint of pride flashed into his eyes before his face returned an emotionless mask. "So the two blue orbs you were manipulating with magic some days ago... they were the Tesseract part that Schmidt possessed, weren't they?".
"Very good, Stark. I wondered if you would understand that".
He had a lot more questions on the Reactor and even now his eyes couldn't avoid staring at the pulsing blue energy that was life and power at the same time.
"How long would you survive if I took it out from your chest?".
Stark tensed immediately.
"In a not stressful environment, some minutes". His expression returned a hostile mask full of suspicion. "In a stressful situation, like being held by a psychopathic god with a debatable sense of humor, I could go into cardiac arrest every second".
He hadn't lied. Loki remembered all too well the awful sensation of dying, when he had relived Stark's panicked moments without the Reactor. But he was still interested in it, the Reactor was so bright and full of unknown power that he was attracted to it regardless the mortal's words.
"I desire to see it", he said, stretching his hand toward Stark's chest.
The mortal grabbed his wrist before he reached it.
"And I desire to be in my home in Malibu, with a glass of scotch in my hand and a dumb model on my knees ready to laugh at my drunken jokes".
"I have no intentions of killing you, Stark. But I want to see what it looks like".
The fingers on his wrist were weak in comparison to his own strength; he could free himself anytime, but now the mortal and he were still talking and it wasn't the time to use violence.
"Then I want to see your true appearance. Thor said you look like an emo rock star because of a spell. The pretty, anorexic mad god is actually a mask for a pimply fat villain?".
The rage took possession of Loki in the blink of an eye, so burning and violent that it interrupted his breathing. He roughly pulled Stark towards his body, then he grabbed his throat, while his fingers trembled for the urge to dig into the mortal's flesh, to crumble it, to destroy.
"Do not talk about Thor or about what that oaf told you about me ever again, or I will rip your Reactor from your chest and crush it", he hissed.
But his mind was already being overwhelmed by the voices – unworthy son, monster, Jotun. 'No, Loki'.
The mortal grabbed his arm, trying to break free from his grasp. He already couldn't breathe properly but there was a sharp smile on his face when he dared to meet Loki's gaze.
"Have I just found your Arc Reactor, Reindeer Games?".
Loki strengthened his grip, while the urge to kill the mortal almost overwhelmed his mind. Then he remembered all the time he wasted on him, trying to heal him, the secrets Stark still held and the worth of an enemy prisoner that finally, after some days of annoying apathy, was slowly returning to being the interesting Midgardian he enjoyed fighting against.
"You will not talk about Thor in my presence again".
He shoved the mortal away with enough strength to make him fall off the bed.
Stark stood up immediately, massaging his throat where a second imprint of his hand was forming above the older bruises.
"Then you don't go around touching people where they don't want to be touched. Thor doesn't want his hammer to be touched, and I mean the hammer he carries around bound to his belt, not the one under it. You don't want people to touch your mix of inferiority complex, jealousy and family shit that happened in your life. And I don't want my Arc Reactor to be touched. Is that clear?".
Stark was ridiculous: naked and so weak that his legs were trembling, with his throat and neck full of bruises, and still he dared to threaten him, a god. But Stark's gaze was hard and Loki remembered well the other occasion when that Midgardian, who at first had looked so pathetic, had threaten him.
"Maybe you do not fully understand your situation. You are my prisoner, mortal, you are not allowed to bargain".
Stark came closer to the bed.
"Believe me, it never ended well for the guys who held me prisoner".
He was smiling. In a sharp, menacing way that showed he wasn't really broken, not anymore. It was a smile belonging to a man that was worth destroying.
Loki couldn't help but smiling too.
"Before, you were being kept prisoner by mere mortals. I am a god".
"And I am the smartest man in the world and the weak Midgardian who entered your portal carrying on his shoulder a fucking nuclear missile that destroyed the Chitauri army".