It was a sharp contrast to the two days they had spent in England. Tony was on a business trip and Loki has stayed at the tower, feeling utterly alone without any reason. The man whose name still was the name of the company had to go or Pepper would have hauled his ass there, she probably phrased it more elegant than her former boss. Apart from that, it was something important about clean energy or development aid or both and Loki had no interest and no intention to join him on that trip. Tony didn't need him for that and he would be with Pepper and a lot of people in suits. Expensive suits in a world Loki knew nothing about. So he stayed.

It wasn't the first time the engineer would be away for a few days, but somehow this time it gave him too much time to think. On the second day, Loki was trying to work on the Hulkbuster and it wasn't going well. There was a mistake and he couldn't find where exactly it was. He tried to concentrate just on the problem but he couldn't and it frustrated him beyond reason. He decided to have a drink. Or two. And then he just followed Tony's pattern and emptied a whole bottle of that honey rum he had learned to enjoy that much. It was not only Tony's absence or the whole Avengers thing or anything he could point out, it was the mixture of everything that happened and the fact that he now had time to think about it in solitude. The silence made his thoughts race and travel to places where he didn't want to go. It made him nervous and tense.

He let the empty bottle hover a few inches over the workbench. With every twist of his fingers, he turned it or changed the height in which it floated in the air without even touching it. A bizarre and silent dance while music was playing in the background that didn't reach his mind.

Magic. The same magic that could create wonders as well as pain and misery that could cause damage as well as beauty. I'm using it to play with a bottle. He laughed and it was an ugly noise.

Magic couldn't make him feel better and he knew so damn well that even if he could make himself feel better, he didn't want it at the moment. He felt miserable and tried to convince himself that he wanted to be miserable. He felt like he deserved the hurt. He wasn't sure for what exactly but the more he was sure he deserved it.

This is just human technology, it shouldn't be a problem to find a solution. I should be able to do that. He cursed. I'm trying to assure myself, that everything is alright. It isn't.

Even with all that power, sometimes I have to work so hard to push the feeling of being helpless aside. Of being useless. Worthless. Something creeping into my mind like a shadow in peripheral vision. Coming closer. That's just fear, isn't it? Ridiculous and foolish.

Everything could be taken away from me again. I could be alone again. Without anybody, without anything. Would I just break into a million pieces, nothing and nobody can ever put back together?

He let the bottle drop to the surface, the green sparks surrounding it disappeared and the flask shattered. He stared at it for a moment, then caused the evidence to vanish. The broken bits of glass, the dark drops of liquid just wiped out. He let his head fall on his chest.

The feeling of utterly and complete helplessness has left me with wounds that won't heal to scars. This will never end. No matter what I do. Time does not heal all wounds. It just teaches you to live with them. And some of the broken parts that never heal will cut your insides open without warning. Internal bleeding. I'm irrevocably damaged, and no matter what I do or how well I do it, it will be there. Breaking to the surface at the worst possible times.

He stood up to get another bottle but then decided against and sat down again.

I slowly forget the memory of pain. I remember it, I always will, but I don't feel it so violently anymore. More like it happened to someone else and I'm just the witness. Burdened with seeing it all over again and again. Almost like it didn't happen to me. But it did and I'll never forget. Sure, there are moments, hours, even days I don't think about. But out of the blue, it's there all over again. It doesn't go away. Never.

Fear, desperation, and the memory of being in so much mental and physical pain that reality stopped to exist replaced by horror that defies space and time. These memories stay. And sometimes they sneak into my conscience with the threat of repetition. Like I'm still bound in chains, invisible, but weighing me down. Holding me still, unable to escape whatever might follow. Shouldn't I be over this? I shouldn't feel like a scared child hiding under the bed. I just shouldn't. It's pathetic and disgraceful.

"I'm inept and incapable." He didn't mean to speak out loud.

"Sir," JARVIS answered him with his usual calm voice. Before he could add something Loki already answered him. "That wasn't meant for you. Sometimes I'm just caught in the hell inside of my own mind. Nothing and nobody can change that, JARVIS."

"I'm sorry."

"That´s just the way it is. I probably have a few thousand years of this in front of me, I better get used to it."

"That's a rather dark outlook of the future, sir."

"Realistic. I'm used to resentment and disappointment, I might get used to this, too. Without falling from a bridge, I mean."

"Perhaps you might want to call him and talk for a while?"

I can't tell Tony this. How can I even be that weak? I can do so many things, yet I don't trust into that. I sit here and wait for the illusion to shatter. Like a stupid child, afraid of what lingers in the darkness. Wait for the delusion to reveal something so much darker. I wait for him to leave, for my power to vanish, for everything good to break and leave behind only desperation. I wait for reality to break, to reveal that it was all an illusion covering pain that won't end.

"That will not be necessary, JARVIS."

Just be quiet already. His throat hurt and his eyes burned as he forced himself not to cry. Not over himself.

"So let's try that again, JARVIS. Open that other blueprint once more, please." He went back to work, ignoring himself as best as he could. "I can't figure out what the problem here is. JARVIS, we're going to build that part." He circled around a section of the blueprint. "I need something to look at and touch to solve that. Or throw it at a wall, if I'm still stuck."

He spent the rest of the day with it.


Loki fell asleep in the workshop. He woke with a start when JARVIS was more or less screaming his name. "What happened?" It took him a moment to sort his thoughts as well as his limbs. Sleeping like that wasn't exactly comfortable.

"He is absent. I can't reach Mrs. Pepper or Mr. Happy either. Right after the GPS-signal of his phone and tablet went missing, Sir's subcutaneous transmitters stopped communicating. Both of them."

"What? How can that even happen?"
"It can't. There is absolutely no natural way for this to just happen. Nothing would manage to accidentally deactivate all of this security measures. Also, I can't find him on security footage or any other way I tried. He vanished off the face of the earth and I can't track him, no matter what I tried. This should be impossible. After Afghanistan Sir implemented additional programs that should find him everywhere, every time. If none of that works he needs help."

"Have you tried." Loki couldn't end his sentence.

"I tried everything possible. To no avail."

"Call the other Avengers. If you can't find him, perhaps they can." This wasn't the time for him to deny help. If JARVIS wasn't able to find Tony something clearly went very, very wrong.


"Can't you track him?" Clint asked Loki who stared at him and asked. "How?"

"Some magic voodoo stuff?"

"No." Loki turned to Natasha. "How you can work with him with a straight face remains beyond me."

She didn't answer. Just asked, "Ransom demands?"

"None."
Barton cursed.

"Are you sure, he's not just at a party and forgot his phone?" Steve still wore sportswear. He was sparring with Thor when JARVIS called them.

Natasha didn't let an agitated Loki answer. "He wouldn't. Not anymore." She started walking and motioned the others to follow her. "As Stark is one of the most paranoid persons and all his measures were rendered useless this is critical. JARVIS, relay everything that might be useful to my tablet. We'll need the Quintjet. I'll do some research while we fly to his last known location."


Meanwhile Tony slowly woke up. Disoriented and confused. He had no idea what had happened or where he was. He just remembered a blinding light and an explosion right in front of him at a conference table. He had sunken into darkness before he could react.

When he finally managed to open his eyes he was blinking against artificial lighting high above his head. He lay on a cot in a small and empty room. Windowless, one door that looked like a vault door. Light gray and white floors and walls.

"You're awake."

Tony jerked away reflexively but there was nowhere to go. His vision was still blurry and it took him some time to survey the tall man that towered over him. Piercing blue eyes and short blonde hair and not much more to see as he was wearing neutral military clothing. He didn't waste time with introductions.

"Was a surprise that this thing," Much to Tony's discomfort the guy bent forward and knocked at the place where the Arcreactor was covered by something assembling a prisoner's garb. "Isn't part of your suit but of your body. We'll talk about that later. We removed your other belongings including the transmitters under your skin."

That explained the stinging pain in his right upper arm and left leg. Fuck. Successfully he hid his irritation. "You should have scheduled an appointment. I'm not available for interviews at the moment. Next month may be an opportunity."

He still felt foggy and his head hurt. "What's with Pepper and the others?"

"They are still where you last saw them. We were only interested in you."
That was at least a piece of good news. "I am honored. If this is going to be a surprise party I have to say that I miss the alcohol, the decoration is lousy and the only guest even more."

"You're lucky, that we prefer you alive." Tony's relieve about that vanished as fast as it came. "Not necessarily in one piece, just alive."

Tony briefly thought about attacking the guy, trying to use the moment of surprise and get out of here but scrapped the idea when he struggled to sit up. Whatever they had used to knock him out was still in his system. He needed his whole strength to just sit and he couldn't imagine standing or running. He slightly shook his head but it made vertigo and nausea worse.

"What do you want from me? Ransom? Or just spending time with your favorite billionaire? You can get an autograph, just give me a sheet of paper and a pen, dear."

The man backhanded him across the face. It made him hit his head on the wall behind him and it made him angry. "I'm not so much into that stuff than you might think. And you're so not my type."

"The Avengers became a constant annoyance to us. We'll put a stop to that. And you will help us. You're the weakest link. You're neither a so-called god or a super soldier nor did you have years of S.H.I.E.L.D. training. As long as you're not near any technology or your suits you're no problem. You'll tell us about their plans and everything else we want to know."

"I don't think so." Tony clenched his teeth. "I'm really busy with my other obligations. Also, who are we?"

"Remember the base with the Chitauri weaponry? My brother worked there."

"Oops. Would like to say I'm sorry but I'm not. So you're HYDRA. Perhaps you want to change your employer? Stark Industries offers high wages and health-care."

The man laughed. "When we're done with you, you won't talk back anymore."

"You say that like it's a feasible thing," Tony answered. "You don't know me, do you?"

"I know you well enough, Anthony Edward Stark. You, on the other hand, know nothing about me and what I could do to you. In the end…"

Tony interrupted him. "The in-the-end speech I already had and spoken by someone exceeding you by far."

"We'll see. You're either talking to me now or later but you will." That smile was unsettling, "It's a matter of when not if." He grinned and Tony balled his hands into fists. "We'll have time for that when you're completely awake again. I have exciting plans for you and I want you to enjoy every minute of it." With this last words, the man turned and knocked at the door that was opened quickly. Someone handed him a bottle with water. He turned and put it on the ground. "We don't want you to pass out because of dehydration, do we?" He left without looking back.

Tony sighed. He was undeniably thirsty and since staggering through the desert with the sun mercilessly burning down on him he hated the feeling. He remembered the symptoms and knew it would make it so much harder to come up with an escape plan. Standing up and walking to the bottle was exhausting and the whole ordeal made him livid. He took the opportunity to take a closer look at the door. It had no visible hinges, no doorknob, and no lock he could reach from this side of the smooth metal. Shit.

There was that specific breaking noise when he screwed off the cap of the bottle. Turned out, he was thirstier than he had thought. After being unconscious for the gods alone know how long, the water tasted good. He emptied the little container in one go.

It dawned on him that something was wrong when a little bit later the door opened again and his captor grinned first at the empty bottle and then at his prisoner. "Enjoy the show." Then he left again.

Don't panic. They don't want me dead so whatever that was, it will not kill me. Perhaps just a placebo to try scaring the shit out of me.

It turned out, it wasn't. It came creeping and went from slight discomfort to hurt, to feeling incredibly ill. Violently sick. He doubled over, hugging himself in pain while cramps shook his body. He stumbled to the cot and collapsed, his hands clenched into fists. He was sweating and the clothes he wore, stick on his skin after a few minutes. At the same time, he felt cold and broke into shivers. Gripping the metal border of the cot so tight that his knuckles went white and his whole face twisted in agony he was trembling uncontrollably. He curled himself up in a ball, cursing HYDRA, trying to breathe and concentrate on that instead of the feeling of his body, which vehemently opposed to whatever they might have given him.

That wasn't what he had expected. This wasn't the same as forcing his head underwater. He wasn't sure if this was better.