Life is never gentle

by Cip

No-one ever said life was kind or gentle and Tony is about to find out the hard way just how difficult it can be. And this time he can't call on the Avenger's for help and can't tell Pepper the truth - he has to do this alone, and that thought is terrifying. FrostIron, warnings inside.

27. Chapter 27

The next few days were confusing and stressful for all concerned. Coulson's team had left and returned to the base they were using, taking a list of locations and names to deal with. In return they sent back the very good news that Fitz had woken up in their absence and – as far as they could tell – was coherent and mostly aware. In the meantime some more loyal Shield agents had crawled out of the woodwork so the Avenger's didn't feel like they were throwing Coulson out to the lions so much. Maria had also left to go back into the fight – her skills put to much better use now that she was back in the field.

During this time Tony quietly explained to Steve and Pepper what had happened on Asgard since the Captain had left, which mostly involved discussing his new immortality. He let Clint tell Natasha though, since he knew that the archer had an extra part to add to that conversation. He still hadn't heard back from the two of them as to their views on their own possible immortality, but they had a tough decision ahead of them so he didn't expect an answer immediately.

Steve had taken the news in his stride – he was used to radical transformations after all – but Pepper had been beside herself. Having been at Tony's side for so many years and to then face losing him to something like a heart problem had been even tougher on her than the rest of Avenger's, so to hear that not only was he now perfectly healthy, but also going to live for ever had made her first hit him with her briefcase, and then cling to him sobbing. As it was Tony had expected this, so wasn't really too bothered.

There was another person that Tony had to tell, and he took a trip out to see Colonel Rhodes and catch up on what had happened.

That didn't go down so well. For a start, he had vanished for the past five months without a word and his friend didn't appreciate being kept out of the loop. Rhodey knew about Loki and Tony's old relationship – although he had never seemed fully convinced that it was a good thing to get the God back. The fact that Tony had put his own health at risk for someone that Rhodes didn't think was worth it did not sit well with the Iron Patriot whatsoever. He had been extremely busy over the past few years, and couldn't necessarily be with Stark as much as he'd have liked, but that didn't mean his concern was never there. To hear that his friend had taken such a ridiculous risk seriously pissed him off.

The only thing that really kept Rhodes in the coffee shop instead of storming out over Stark's recklessness was the knowledge that as much as Tony had saved Loki, Loki had saved Tony. That kept him there long enough to hear the end of the story and learn that Stark was not only healthy but that his heart problems were sorted for life. Indefinite life.

Finally Rhodey agreed that however pissed off he was with Tony, Hydra were a bigger problem that needed dealing with first. They decided to meet up in a few more days to see where Iron Patriot could be put to best use, but not before the Colonel made it very clear that – married or not – Loki still had yet to meet with his official Best Friend approval, and he was entirely within his rights to send the trickster packing. Tony couldn't fault the logic since Rhodes had missed his chance at being best man.

They agreed on two days' time, but left without really resolving their argument.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

In the meantime, help had arrived at Stark tower in an unexpected form and via the roof.

They almost learnt the hard way that Tony's new defence systems worked like a charm and it was only down to Jarvis' quick reflexes that their guest wasn't fried on the spot.

"Hey Sam!" Steve jogged across the roof to where his friend was standing frozen on the very edge, staring down the barrel of an over-sized anti-missile artillery gun. "Jarvis put that damn thing away!"

The gun retracted, but slowly enough so as to say 'I'm keeping an eye on you'.

"Hey, glad you made it." Steve clapped his shaken friend on the back, having to place his hand carefully to avoid the wings.

Sam didn't even look at him, still eyeing the now retracted weaponry suspiciously. "Are you guys usually this paranoid?"

"Remember this tower was on Hydra's hit list?"

"Oh. Yeah, yeah that'd get a bit of paranoia running."

Captain America laughed. "Yeah. We weren't expecting you to come in on the roof, so the defence systems thought you were a threat."

"Won't make that mistake again." Sam grinned as the mechanical wings folded away into the pack on his back. "Any chance of a drink?"

"Of course, come on down." Steve led the way down a flight of stairs to the elevator. "Jarvis will have informed the other's that you're here so you'll probably meet the whole gang."

"Is Nat here too?"

"She comes and goes, but was here this morning so it's likely she still is. Why?"

"Hey, she's my type, no harm in asking after her." Sam said with a grin. "I like a woman who can take charge and kick ass."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "Really? Well, good luck with that."

"What? Don't think she'd go for me?"

"Can't comment. With everything going on recently I don't see why not."

Sam laughed. "Everything that's been going on? It's only been a week since I last saw you, what's been going on?"

Steve leant against the wall of the elevator, folding his arms. "Well, for a start Tony Stark is back, which is why I invited you over, and he's got his partner with him now. Things are a little…odd around here right now."

"After what we've been through, define odd."

"Ever met a God before? We've got two wandering around here at the moment."

If Steve had been going for shocking his friend, Sam simply looked intrigued. "I know Thor is here, but who's the other? Another Norse God?"

"Yeah, Thor's younger brother. Uh…How much do you know about the Norse myths?"

"Nothing. We stuck to the normal syllabus in my school."

"Ever heard of Loki?"

Sam shrugged and shook his head, and once again Steve realised it had been a blessing in disguise that the media hadn't been able to get a proper fix on who Loki was all those years ago. It would seriously help them out now that the God was on their side rather than fighting them.

"Well, Loki's…Loki's a bit different. Don't let him get to you. And he's got a bit of a history so if things seem tense between him and other people, or there are weird gaps in a conversation just roll with it. It's best not to ask."

"Hey, whatever, we've all got stuff to hide, right? And he's a Norse God?" The soldier shook his head with a wry laugh. "Hell, a few weeks ago this would have seemed really strange. Is he like Thor? I've seen that guy a bit on TV."

Steve had to laugh at that. "He'd hate to be compared to Thor! Trust me!"

The elevator was still steadily counting down the floors and Sam pulled the heavy machinery pack off and set it on the floor for a moment. He looked around for a second at the Stark Industries logo above the elevator keypad. "Man, I can't believe I'm in the Avengers Tower! Y'know, if someone said to me two months ago that this would be my life I would have called them crazy."

"I know that feeling." The elevator 'dinged' gently and Steve gestured at the door as it opened. "Shall we?"

He knew that Jarvis had already informed the others that Sam had arrived so was unsurprised to see the majority of them already in the main living room waiting for them. Evie wasn't there – Jarvis had her catching up on missed work – and Natasha was finishing off down in the gym, but other than that the motley crew were all there.

"Hey guys, I've got our guest. Meet Sam Wilson, USAF Pararescue."

"Veteran." Sam quickly added. "I'm not in active service now." He looked around at the infamous Avengers in all their can't-be-arsed-to-move-and-greet-you-properly glory. "Hi."

Tony was the only one who could be bothered to actually get up and shake Sam's hand, grinning broadly.

"Hey man, Steve's been singing your praises – says you're a great guy to have around in a tight spot."

"He's been talking about me?" Sam smirked and elbowed the Captain. "Didn't know you cared, Cap."

"I just said you were good cannon fodder while the real work's going on elsewhere."

"Which of us ended up in hospital?"

"Which of us jumped out of a falling skyscraper without a chute."

"You didn't even see that."

Tony laughed. "Yeah, you're gonna fit right in around here! Now, gimme!"

"Huh?"

"The wings! Let's see them!"

Steve rolled his eyes, realising why Tony had been so eager compared to the other Avengers to meet Sam; he wanted to get his hands on the tech. Sam was certainly reticent about handing over his precious wing-pack, Tony Stark or not.

"He won't ruin it, I promise." The Captain said with a tired sigh. "Might improve it though."

"Improve it?" Stark snorted with laughter. "Look, this thing's ancient tech!" He began examining the mechanism, even though Sam hadn't fully given his consent. "See here? The turning circle is appalling, and the acceleration would let a Sherman tank overtake you."

The soldier looked as if someone had insulted his kid. "Hey, this thing's the best there is!" He pulled the wing-pack back out of Tony's hands. "You haven't even used it!"

"Used it? Kid, I invented it. EXO-7 Falcon, titanium and chrome with carbon-nanotubes running through a fixed mesh and a quantum processing system with faux-AI interface. Piece of shit." Stark held his hands out patiently. "Hand it over, I'll see you in about three hours and I swear you'll feel like Peter Pan himself next time you fly."

Sam glanced at Steve who nodded wearily. "He's an obnoxious ass, but you can trust him with it. He did create the Ironman suit after all."

The soldier looked less than convinced, but the name of the Ironman armour carried a lot of weight and he grudgingly handed his precious wings over.

"What armament do you use?"

"Dual HK MP5's."

Tony wrinkled his nose. "You're not allowed in the Avenger's with old fashioned weapons. I'll work on that too."

"You made that rule up!" Steve called after him as the inventor left the room, carrying the Falcon wings. The elevator doors opened to let Tony in and Natasha stepped out, her hair still curling and wet at the ends where she had showered after hitting the gym. Obviously Jarvis had told her Sam was there since she didn't seem surprised to see him.

"Hey soldier." Her eyes flicked across his face and he grinned at her.

"Hey, still killing the bad guys in insanely epic ways?"

"When I have time." She pushed past and made her way to the bar to grab herself a glass of juice. Sam's gaze remained locked-on until Steve nudged him hard in the side. Needless to say, Clint had seen the soldier's interest and was appraising the man shrewdly. His own lack of romantic interest didn't mean that he wasn't still fiercely protective of Natasha, whether she needed protecting or not.

"So, let's catch you up on what we've got so far." Steve guided his friend over to the sofas and after sorting out drinks for everyone the group – sans Ironman – tried to get Sam up to speed on latest events. They missed out the parts about Asgard though; there were some things that weren't immediately necessary in the current situation.

The initial discussion took about half an hour – Sam knew the back ground already, so only needed to be caught up on recent developments. He wasn't really fazed by Thor and Loki's presence since Thor was already a staple in the media and once you had grown used to one alien another wasn't half as surprising. Loki didn't mind being somewhat overlooked – after all he hardly wanted to be recognised.

Most of the conversation revolved around the Hydra bases they had pinned down as the most important to sort out, and which they thought they should hit first. As a soldier who had served with the modern army with modern tactics Sam had valuable insights on their methods and infiltration. Rhodes had also been able to help on this front, but he'd been serving as Iron Patriot for a good few years now and whilst out-of-touch wasn't quite the phrase, he wasn't quite as up to date as Sam was.

It was difficult to establish a chain of command since without Fury calling the shots there were various personalities that automatically assumed leadership, and that in turn caused tension. Steve and Thor especially were struggling not to naturally take charge and it was anyone's guess what would have happened had Tony been there too.

As it was, of all people Bruce was the one who in his quiet unassuming way kept them all on track and diffused the problems before they fully erupted. Pepper also took a big hand in this and between the two of them they managed to guide the others into forming something vaguely coherent. It didn't help that people's ideas of guerrilla warfare, covert operations and subterfuge varied dramatically.

With two modern spies and a modern soldier coming up against a World War Two combat specialist and two God's whose ideas of warfare were still lodged in the dark ages, despite everything it was tough to join together a plan everyone agreed with.

The arrival of Rhodes – which brought a brief respite as he and Sam were introduced – only really added fuel to the fire and once again it was a ridiculous hour when Pepper realised the time and decided to call it a night.

Tony still hadn't reappeared in all that time, and as was becoming habit his husband was sent to fetch him for some food.

Loki couldn't be bothered with teleporting, so took the elevator down to the labs to find his missing partner instead. They'd barely been back on Earth any time at all and he was already seeing a pattern here, which he wasn't happy with. Tony had said the wings wouldn't take three hours, and it had been over eight. This wasn't acceptable.

Unsurprisingly the Falcon pack was long finished and sitting abandoned on the work surface whilst Tony was sat at his desk typing. He looked up at the sound of the electric doors opening and smiled tiredly.

"Hey. What's up?"

"We're having dinner."

"Dinner? What time is it? How long have I been down here?"

"It's gone ten. What have you been doing all this time?" Loki was evidently worrying that there was going to be a repeat of the last time he'd come down to find his husband in the labs. However, when he rounded the desk to have a look at the computer screens there was nothing to do with the current situation in sight. One screen had long lists of numbers and mathematical coefficients, whilst another was covered in infra-red spectra of what appeared to be another planet.

"What are you doing?"

"I was writing up the improvements I'd made to the wings, got distracted by my mess of a desktop and ended up tidying up files." Tony had been using a pen and tablet to interact with the computer system, and now tapped the pen against one of the on-screen images. "I then started procrastinating and reading through all this stuff. Recognise it?"

Loki gave the picture a cursory glance then shook his head. "No, should I?"

"You spent the past seven years there."

"Oh…" The prince stuttered – an unusual occurrence to say the least as he stared at the grainy pictures. "I never…never saw it from the outside…"

It was hard for Loki to place the image on the screen in the same frame of mind as the hell he had gone through. The only places he'd ever seen there were either the cell he'd been kept in, or the chamber where the chitauri had done their experiments. He'd never thought of the two grim rooms as a part of a larger whole – that he had actually been on a planet. They'd just been hell. Nothing more and nothing less.

Tony glanced up at his partner and immediately picked up on the tense cast to Loki's jaw so hit a button on the corner of his tablet and minimised the lot.

"Anyway. I've updated the data from the video feed and such that Jarvis had been running when we went to get you and this was all going to be put into Jarvis' deep storage memory."

Loki nodded slowly, and it was pretty obvious he wasn't listening.

"I emailed Merlin back too." Tony added. "He's not replied, so I don't know what's going on there, but at least he can't say we aren't talking to him. And Evie's being a cow at the moment, so don't try talking to her unless you're fully armoured."

The talk of his children seemed to shake Loki back out of the frozen stupor the memories had left him in and he frowned slightly.

"What is wrong with Evelyn?"

"College." Tony brought up a webpage he'd been browsing, listing which institutions were the best in the league tables for various subjects. MIT and Harvard were sitting pretty at the top, but there were a handful from outside the States too.

"Why on Earth is she looking at university now? She's fourteen!"

"I was in MIT at the age of fifteen. She's smart enough and is desperate to follow in the old Stark footsteps."

Loki pulled the spare chair over and sat down next to his husband, frowning at the list of colleges. "So why is she in a bad mood?"

"Current circumstances." Tony shrugged. "She's pissed. She's spent her whole life pretty much cooped up here, and has never once complained because she's always recognised the reasons behind it, but I think she's been looking at college as her way out. And now with all of this crap suddenly happening she's realised that it isn't going to happen. At least, not any time soon."

"She can't be sheltered forever – if she wants to live her life she will have to accept the risks."

"She's not old enough! She's still a kid!"

"You just said that you yourself were fifteen when you went."

"My parents weren't embarking on an undercover war against an evil Nazi-led organisation." Tony ran a tired hand through his hair. "To be honest, I'd never even considered Evie going off to college and she kinda blind-sided me with it."

"It's a little sudden, is it not?"

"Apparently she's been looking into it for ages. Her big plan was to wait until we got you back, and then off she'd go. I mean, obviously she wouldn't leave immediately or something, but this plan's been brewing and it seems it's kinda hit home quite hard that her dream of leaving isn't going to happen. And she's decided that now is the best time to have that revelation." He smirked drily. "Damn kid's got no sense of timing at all."

"She's trying to make sense of everything, Tony. It has been a rough few months for her. If this is an idea she's had for some time it would be reasonable for her to fall back on it as some semblance of normality and then be crushed to find that it's not feasible."

"She's still too young."

Loki smiled slightly. "Maybe if you had shown some sympathy to the fact that her aspirations and dreams for the future had been ruined, rather than brushing them off as something unattainable anyway she would not be so upset."

"Yeah, how about you don't give me parenting advice? I've raised the kid for fourteen years; I think I know how to talk to her."

"Well if she is now in a bad mood you apparently don't."

"…You're not helping my bad mood right now." Tony's voice made it clear that teasing was most certainly not appreciated. "Either say something useful and/or comforting or get the hell out of my labs."

"I don't usually work with 'comforting' and I don't know what would be useful in this context."

"Urgh!" The man thumped his head down onto the desk with a frustrated snarl. "Then why are you here?" It was a blatantly rhetorical question and when he didn't get an answer he rolled his head just enough to peek at Loki sideways. "Am I a horrible parent?"

"Because you don't want your daughter to be an obvious and visible target to an insane Nazi terrorist organisation who have everything Shield owned at their disposal? Sure, that makes you an absolutely despicable parent."

"Heh. I feel like I'm the worst."

"Don't be ridiculous, Tony. Evelyn has obviously reached the conclusion herself that university will have to wait, and you were simply not in a good frame of mind for her to come and use you as a verbal punchbag about it. She needed to vent and it was simply not a good time to do so."

"Stop being so bloody reasonable!"

"Are you going to go and talk to her about it?"

"I'll leave it a few hours first; she's a monster when she's angry."

"Oh, so some Jötunn features made it into her genetic make-up after all."

"I don't know if you think you're being funny, Loki, but right now I'm not fucking laughing. My daughter's pissed at me for something entirely out of my control, the world as we know it is falling down around us and you seem to think it appropriate to take the piss."

Loki held up both hands and began theatrically folding down fingers. "Well that has to be a record; we have been on Earth all of five days and this is turning into our seventh argument."

"And whose fault is that?"

"Classically I would blame the Norns, since they must have had been laughing when they thought we would be good together!"

Tony thumped his head back down onto the desk again with a loud clunk that sounded quite painful. "Jesus…has it really been seven? We're not that bad, are we?"

"Apparently we are."

"Apparently." The man didn't move his head so his voice was muffled against the cold chrome. "Are we doing the right thing here? Do you really think the Norns, or whatever, put us together as a joke?" He felt Loki's hand on the back of his head, fingers running gently through his hair.

"Not really, no. We just need some more time to work out our differences."

"We've had quite a while already. Do you really think we can sort this out?" Tony didn't sound upset, if anything it was just tired defeat in his voice. "There's all this shit going down right now, Evie's falling apart and needs a strong support system and we can't even talk civilly to each other. How is this meant to work?" He finally raised his head enough to look at his husband. "What if we can't make this work?"

"Tony…" Loki smiled gently, cupping the man's cheek. "We have never been together as a couple; we have never tried to make this work and never needed to. It will not happen immediately. Look at us now; we have already successfully stopped a fight and are now rationally discussing the problem."

"I guess."

The God leant over to tap his finger against the computer screen and one of the images of the chitauri's base came back up, a photo of the outside of the complex.

"There. See that? That was at the edge of your known universe. Even Heimdall could not see that far and yet you managed to find it, get to it and destroy it. For me. I think we will survive a few arguments after you went through all that trouble." He studied the image more curiously this time. "I never imagined it to look like that. I only saw the two rooms and the décor was never high on my list of interests."

"I would rather assume you had other things on your mind."

"Oh, just a little."

"Like their terrible taste in light fittings."

Loki let out a startled laugh, surprising himself that he could allow a joke about such things. "Indeed. Their furniture was hardly Chippendale either."

"And the flooring left a lot to be desired."

"How am I joking about this?!"

"Well at least we aren't fighting now."

"There is that." Loki smiled and held his hand out. "Come on, dinner should have arrived and you need to eat."

Tony grabbed the finished wingpack with his spare hand as his husband bodily dragged him out of the lab by the other – and when a God drags you, you stay dragged.

Up in the lounge – that had been commandeered as their command base – the rest had already started without them, including Evie who had mooched out of her room and joined them since the lure of food was too much for any teenager.

Tony deposited the Falcon wings back in their grateful owner's hands and went to dig out some of the Korean take-away for himself. Loki went to follow only to have his path blocked by Colonel Rhodes.

"Excuse me? You are in my way."

"Yeah, that was the plan." Rhodey actually grabbed the prince by the upper arm, entirely uncaring who and what the taller man was. "Come on, we need to talk."

"Oh do we?" If they hadn't been in a crowded room of allies – and Evelyn – Loki would have simply turned James into a greasy smear on the floor. As it was, incinerating the Iron Patriot was probably not conducive to team spirit so instead he allowed the soldier to tow him over to a quieter corner of the room. "What do you want?"

"You know I'm Tony's best mate, right?"

"He mentioned you once or twice."

"Yeah, well, I look out for my mates, and I don't like you."

Loki felt a grin steal across his face – the one that usually surfaced when he sensed a good fight coming on. "Oh come now; we don't know each other, that's hardly fair."

"Fuck fair. You burnt up half of New York and chucked Tony out of a window. I'm called the Iron Patriot for a reason; I don't like people fucking with my country or my friends!"

"I care nothing for your country, but fucking your friend is currently my favourite past-time."

James choked as Loki smiled beatifically at him.

"I don't want you anywhere near Tony!"

"Uh, too late for that; I married him."

"You threw him out of a window!"

Loki laughed. "Please. If he can forgive that, you can have no cause to complain."

The Colonel didn't seem to be seeing the funny side like the prince was. "Do you not care in the least about what happened?!"

"After everything that has happened since, I cannot say it keeps me awake at night. Has Tony kept you up to date?"

"Kid, chitauri and some torture. So what?"

"Hmm." The disgruntled tone said it all. "You think torture is a thing to make light of?"

"You're a God; like it was going to do you any real harm." Rhodes allowed himself a grin when he saw Loki pale and knew that he had finally landed a hit. "Oh I'm sorry, was that a nerve there?" His grin broadened as the prince struggled momentarily to reply. "Oh, it really was. Well, what do you know, God's have weak spots."

"Tell me, do you take the piss out of Tony for his PTSD?"

"Like that's even the same! Tony never deserved it."

Loki raised his eyebrows, torn half-way between complete disbelief and utter rage. "Excuse me?!" It came out as a spluttered laugh.

"I helped clear up that shit-storm you brought down on New York; you deserved everything you got and more."

There was a very long moment as the two men stared at each other, trying to determine if Rhodes had just signed his death sentence. Then Loki's skin flushed deep blue.

"Oh!" The Colonel took a hurried step back as the air temperature in their immediate vicinity dropped rapidly.

The sudden flash of ice spread out like ground-zero around an atom bomb, a wide circular pattern that rushed across the floor, eating up the plush carpets under thick frost. There were cries of alarm as the others realised what was happening.

"Never presume to know about the sufferings of others." Loki tapped a finger against James' chest, gently resting it there so that ice began to slowly crackle across the man's jacket. "Only when you yourself are blameless, can you lay blame at other's feet, War Machine."

Rhodes appeared to be glued to the spot, frozen – and how apt was that? – as he stared at the Jötunn infront of him. The expression on his face made it very clear that he had not expected to come face to face with someone quite so alien. Loki's glowing red eyes, the deep blue of his skin and raised spiralling patterns that ran across his face made it very clear that he was far more than the man had originally assumed.

"Now, let us make one thing quite clear." His breath came out as a wisp of curling air that crystallised almost immediately in the warm atmosphere. "Whatever has happened in my past, is firmly in the past. If that's good enough for Tony, for Thor, for Asgard – who, by the way, are pretty harsh when it comes to punishments; we're talking medieval – then it should be good enough for someone like you." He removed his finger just as the ice froze right the way through the man's clothing. "So keep your opinions to yourself. Tony and I are married and have a beautiful child together; I will not let you try to disrupt that." He tilted his head slightly and in so doing the blue faded back to his more usual Aesir appearance. "I understand that you simply wish to protect your friend, but a full-on attack was not the way to do it."

"I've always protected Tony; you can't expect me to stop just because someone I've never met says so."

Loki took a step back so that Rhodes could have his personal space back. "A fair point." He surveyed the man shrewdly, taking his time now that the tension had dissipated a little. "Are you always so territorial?"

"Are you always so violent?"

"Only when it involves a personal attack on myself – especially in regards to my relationship."

James folded his arms, his aggressive confidence returning now that Loki had stopped threatening him. "If you hurt him, I'll kill you. And I'm inventive; it will make all that shit the Vikings used to do look like a kids game."

"Believe me; if I hurt him, I would take my own life." It was rare for Loki to sound so genuine – not that the Colonel knew that – but the earnestness couldn't be denied. "He and I are a team; we fight, we argue and we have each other's backs. We are both immortal now – and that means we are in for the long run."

"You married him."

The trickster finally smiled. "His idea, I assure you. I am still waiting for a ring to make an appearance."

"I hope you really do have eternity, because you'll wait forever if you leave something like that up to Tony – he procrastinates."

"Oh I don't know. He did pretty well reaching the other side of the universe."

"First thing he's ever actually focused on for more than five minutes. Even the suits are built in bursts of productivity."

The two men's stances had relaxed, and James finally returned Loki's tentative smile.

"Believe me, Colonel –I cannot promise that Tony will be happy with me for eternity, but I can promise that I will try each and every day to make it so."

Rhodes glanced back at the now-silent room, everyone staring at them wide-eyed. He met Tony's frozen gaze and briefly nodded with a sort of half-shrug. "Eh, he'll do." Without waiting for a reply he turned back to Loki who was beginning to look quite amused. "Sorry, by the way. I decided that what with your reputation I needed to hit you hard and personal to get anything approaching the truth out of you."

"Charming. Remind me to return the favour someday." Loki also took in the expressions of the rest of their group. "Oh, and sorry about the ice. I still cannot entirely control it. Lack of practice and all that."

"You might want to work on that..." Steve said slowly.

"Just a bit." Sam was looking equal parts confused and intrigued. "And did I hear that right? It was you all those years ago with those aliens?"

Loki stared at him for a moment then allowed his old battle armour to materialize around him, helmet and all. Sam took a step backwards, looking alarmed.

"Loki, stop it." Thor's voice was full of older brother harmonics.

"Am I allowed to have any fun?" The glamour disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, leaving Loki in his smart trousers and casual shirt.

"Uh...why is everyone okay with him if he's a genocidal maniac?" Sam wasn't stupid - he could see that even if the others didn't appear to like Loki all that much, they evidently trusted him to be there. Something had to have happened.

The Avengers looked at each other, at Loki, and then at each other again. The trickster covered his mouth, turning away hurriedly. From the way his shoulders were shaking it was fairly evident he was laughing.

"It's not funny, Loki." Steve said disapprovingly.

"Forgive me if I disagree with you on that account."

The Captain turned to an increasingly confused Sam. "It's a really long story, but like most starts with Tony Stark being unable to keep it in his pants."

The Falcon glanced at Tony before his shrewd gaze scanned across to Evelyn. "Oh hang about!" He pointed a finger at Loki. "You're the mysterious mother no-one knows anything about!"

"I happen to be male."

"Bullshit, you happen to be an alien!" Sam looked triumphant as everyone else stared at him in surprise. "What? I'm not stupid; the kid's got his ears and that can only be inherited."

In unison Loki and Evie raised a hand to their respective right ear and glanced at each other. Sam saw this and began to laugh.

"Seriously? This happened?! I know Mr Stark has a hell of a reputation but knocking up an alien who tried to take over the planet is...well...crazy, I guess."

"Believe me; no one was more surprised than I." Loki said.

"But still..." Sam was looking impressed by this point and glanced at Tony. "Nice going Mr Stark."

"I thought you liked women." Steve said slowly.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a fine specimen of the male persuasion every now and then."

Loki seemed thoroughly amused by the whole exchange and bowed his head to the Falcon. Steve groaned.

"Look, as fun as this is, guys, can we get back to the subject in hand? We need to be in Iceland tomorrow."

The group did at least settle down enough to eat, but they realised they wouldn't get any peace until Sam - and Rhodey to some extent - knew the full story. It was a long evening.

WMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

To contend with the time-zone difference they prepared that evening and left at nearly three in the morning so as to reach Iceland with the light.

It was interesting to try and work with the new additions to the team, who did not necessarily gel very well with the established group. Sam slotted in without a problem – used to following orders, and comfortable enough around Steve and Natasha to simply go with the flow. It helped that he was naturally easy going and recognised what it took to work together with a group of near-strangers. Rhodey was less simple to slot into place due to his somewhat complicated relationship with Tony.

Having spent most of their friendship trying to keep the inventor sober, clean, or at the very least coherent, the Colonel was having a hard time letting the man take point on the mission. Even with their shared history of Ironman and War Machine James had kept more than a close eye on his friend. The random child turning up in Tony's life, and then the life-threatening heart condition had only increased this paranoia.

Added the fact that he didn't get on very well with Clint or Natasha, seemed to see Sam as an interloper in his territory and liked Steve but struggled to accept the super-soldier's authority it was somewhat tense.

But those problems paled in comparison with the idea of trying to include Loki in the Avengers.

He was the reason they had formed the Avengers in the first place.

It was a little tricky to work around this memory.

Even just the simple command of 'suit up' held multiple problems. As Thor succinctly put it; "The green was rather noticeable, even if your face was not, and it was about time the helmet went anyway."

It was a fair point, and Loki compromised by going for an older outfit that didn't bear much resemblance to his green Take-Over-the-World gear. But he was not happy about it.

He was even less happy when the travel arrangements were sorted – they were taking the quinjet, naturally – and he simply couldn't see why he couldn't just teleport the group there. Thor provided multiple reasons; mostly in the form of anecdotes of various times they'd tried that and Loki had been knocked out or somehow incapacitated and left everyone stranded because he couldn't get them back home. That cemented the plan to fly, and put the trickster in an extremely bad mood with his brother.

The cabin of the jet had an atmosphere you could cut with a knife; the humans piled down near the pilot's end, and the two God's right up against the cargo doors. Thor looked like a kicked puppy.

After about an hour and a half of terse silence Loki glanced at his brother from the corner of his eye.

"The last time I was in one of these, you threw me out of it."

"Carried you out."

"The landing was definitely more of a throw. I distinctly remember rupturing a disc or two in my spine."

"You were fine."

"Eventually."

Thor managed to catch his brother's eye just as Loki looked away again, his hand raising up to possibly cover a tiny smile.

"It was strange to see you wear that again, by the way." The older God said quietly.

"Oh?"

"Well…the last time you wore that ensemble we were in Jötunnheim and I was trying to start a war."

"Yes. You were an obnoxious bilgesnipe and damn near succeeded in killing us all. At least when I try to kill people I refrain from doing it through stupidity."

"Why are you so angry with me? It cannot be because I opposed you teleporting us all; you know it is risky to have only the one exit strategy."

"I know."

"So…?"

Loki looked down at the all-black Aesir clothing he was wearing. He hadn't bothered with gloves or a cape, but it was essentially his old hunting outfit; worn for centuries and so familiar and so much a part of him that he was constantly having to remind himself of current reality. His fingers were fiddling with the metal links along his arms; a nervous reaction he had always had and that came as easy as breathing.

"You are right; the last time I wore this was on Jötunnheim, and that…everything that went wrong, everything with your banishment, the Destroyer, the void, the chitauri, everything seems to have stemmed from that moment." He looked up and smiled slightly. "And when I am going through those memories you really do not want to annoy me."

"I thought you had worked through all of those things." Thor looked so genuinely confused that his brother just didn't have the heart to be offended by the complete and utter lack of understanding at how deep the issues ran.

"I have barely scratched the surface, brother. If you must know, I have hardly been able to face the full reality of what the chitauri did. It will take many years to come to terms with everything that happened since Jötunnheim and I refuse to rush it."

"Oh…"

"Remember the Dark Elves and how long it took both of us to recover from that?"

Thor's expression darkened at the foul memory and he nodded in understanding. "Yes, alright, Yes, that I do get." The two young prince's had taken centuries to fully recuperate physically and mentally from what had happened to them in the Dark Elf prison camp. If Thor needed anything to explain how badly the events over the past years had affected Loki, that reminder was the perfect analogy.

Loki glanced out one of the windows, although all that was below them was dark water. "So…Iceland."

"Yes?"

"It has been a long time since we were last there. I believe they still worshiped us."

Thor grinned, relieved at the change in conversation. "Oh for the good old days."

Finally Loki smiled properly. "Indeed." He let go of his sleeve and twisted his fingers together instead so that he wasn't pulling at the metal links any more. "You realise this is our first time fighting side-by-side again since Jötunnheim, as well?"

"Whose fault is that?" It was an unusually acerbic reply that was only tempered by Thor's grin. "As I recall, I was all for talking things out like rational beings. You were the one who wanted to stick knives in me."

"If I had really been trying to kill you, you would be dead."

"I know." The thunder God cast a glance at the humans at the other end of the not-that-large quinjet, who were making quiet conversation, but had blatantly heard everything. "Now, are you going to stop sulking? Because right now I believe the team think you are intending to ice everything. Again."

Loki glanced at the other Avengers, and as Thor had said there was some definitely nervous body language going on that had nothing to do with the mission. Only Tony seemed relaxed, faceplate up as he chatted incessantly to Rhodes – also in his suit. The man was obviously on cloud nine and Loki recalled that this was the first Avenger's operation where Stark had been allowed to actually use his suit again rather than fly it remotely. He obviously couldn't wait to start.

"Landing in five." Natasha called out, silencing any quiet talking going on as people began doing final double checks on their equipment and gear. It was still dark out, but dawn was beginning to turn the horizon a deep blue. So far to the north it wasn't going to get fully light since it wasn't summer, but they were anticipating a decent light level for the main operation.

The quinjet landed in the wild landscape, some distance from the town of Husavik and out in the mountainous regions. There was – to the Avenger's surprise – little to no snow, although the two Norse Gods knew what to expect from the country. Given the geology of the area and for the element of surprise they were still a few miles from the Shield/Hydra base, and Loki refused to accept any objections as he teleported the group to the planned area.

The base was almost invisible, perfectly camouflaged in the surrounding rugged nature. From the outside it was an unassuming structure; a small bunker that blended into the rocks around it quite flawlessly, and even if anyone did see anything it looked too small to be anything important.

All of this was observed by Iron Patriot from a safe distance since they were well aware from the blue-prints that Jarvis had that the whole above-ground area was heavily defended. From the same blue-prints they knew that although the structure looked tiny, it was actually only the tip of the iceberg and the real base went down multiple levels underground.

It was an old weapons storage facility – nothing new or experimental, just all of the old creations and out of date tech that Shield had decided was too important to simply throw away. This sounded harmless enough, but a significant majority of the weapons were StarkTech – both generations – so were ridiculously overpowered given what they were. And in the right, or in this case wrong, hands it would be very easy to reconfigure the old weaponry to something more modern and even more deadly. Additionally, there was the possibility of alien items too, including chitauri armaments.

The plan was simple enough since the mission was simple enough. They were to extract anything useful or nuclear, and then destroy the rest of the base. Chances were because it was storage there would only be a skeleton crew of guards there to limit casualties. The real difficulty would be determining whether or not the soldiers there were still loyal to Shield or not.

"Right, the coast appears to be clear." Rhodes said quietly. He was positioned with Thor and Clint facing the area designated as the entrance to the facility, overlooking it from one of the high bluffs in the surrounding mountains. The others were scattered in similar groups around the perimeter, as close as they dared to get without setting off any early warning alarms.

"Okay, here goes nothing then. No pressure, Loki, but this bit is all on you." Steve's voice sounded tense over the earpieces. Trusting Loki enough to live with him was one thing, trusting him enough to hinge a plan's success on him was another. It had taken a lot of cajoling on Thor and Tony's parts to persuade the other's that Loki was their best bet to infiltrate the base without being seen and therefore not losing their element of surprise.

"I am on my way." Loki was with Sam and Natasha, hidden behind a large rock formation and rolled his eyes at the obvious concern in Steve's voice. "Please have a little faith in me Captain."

"I'm a Christian, you pagan jerk." Credit to him, at least Rodgers still had it in him to joke despite the situation, drawing quiet chuckles from the others.

"Fine, I will sing Ave Maria for you when I return, deal?"

"That'll do, now get on with it."

The trickster smiled sharply and vanished.

It was difficult to teleport to a place he didn't know or had never seen, but with the blue-prints in his mind it gave him somewhere to focus on. Loki aimed for just inside the doorway, invisible and blocking his heat signature just in case of thermal imaging cameras.

It was a good job he'd thought to add the precautions.

"Ah."

"Loki? Are you in?" Rodgers voice was tinny in his ear, the sound also masked from the outside.

"Yes. And we have a problem."

"What sort of problem?"

Loki looked around at the apparatus surrounding the doorway. "They have rigged the entrance and I am no expert but I would guess the resulting explosion would be big enough to reach the town." He took a careful step closer and spotted a tiny wire that ran out of the equipment and ran down to a crack in the floor. "Scratch that; it's bigger. I am going to have a look at the lower levels."

"Wait! Wait! You can't just-"

"Well, since there is no way to open the door and let you all in, and this place is almost certainly deserted, I think I can 'just'." He smirked and flicked the earpiece, shorting the circuit.

Now fully alone in the bright corridor with its deadly entrance, Loki took another careful look at the explosives and the triggering system. Whilst he was by no means an expert, he knew his way around a bomb – the whys and wherefores of that knowledge would not go down well with the humans – and after a few minutes he determined that the only triggering mechanism was the opening of the doors, and therefore he was safe to drop the invisibility.

All of the power in the facility was still on, presumably powering the explosive device and any other little surprises that the operatives had left behind. It was impossible to tell if Hydra had already infiltrated the place and had set up the traps, or Shield had managed to evacuate and booby-trapped it against Hydra. Either way, it was not good.

At the end of the corridor there was an elevator and a stairwell. A quick look at both told the trickster that they were likewise rigged and packed with enough C4 to even give a God a serious headache. Whoever had done this had expected the very best in infiltration and it was reasonable to assume every level and doorway was going to be in a similar state.

Loki took stock of the situation and grudgingly decided that he was going to need someone with him to explore the lower levels. He was good with explosives, and generally knew what to look for, but he needed an expert if he was to successfully navigate the whole base. It was imperative to know what had been left behind – if anything – and to glean any clue as to which side the bases occupants had been on.

He closed his eyes and a moment later there was the barrel of a gun forced against the side of his head.

"Jesus, Loki! Don't sneak up like that in the middle of an operation!"

He opened his eyes to see Natasha lowering her gun and looking unusually frazzled. Behind her Sam had both of his own weapons drawn and trained on the trickster. Loki grinned at the two humans, far too amused by their reactions at his teleportation.

"So, what's going on in there?" The woman didn't bother with apologies.

"An awfully large amount of explosives. I need you to come with me; I am not up to speed with modern bombs."

"Wouldn't Rhodes or Sam be better?"

Loki cast a quick glance at the Falcon. "The Colonel cannot be stealthy in the Iron Patriot armour, and I need someone used to working on the ground." His gaze became somewhat more respectful. "I know you are an expert at what you do, Falcon, but you are an airman, and your skill is in flight."

"I know my way around a bomb."

"I know, but we do not know each other and in this situation I want someone I know at my side."

Sam smiled slightly. "Fair enough; but you can't always have that luxury."

"But right now I can." Loki touched Natasha's wrist, both to get her attention and a more purposeful gesture to alert her to the oncoming spell. She had barely enough time to inform Steve of what was happening before there was a swirl of black and she found herself standing inside the complex, facing the doors.

"Oh…"

"See the problem?"

It only took a few moments for the woman to take stock of the situation. "That's a lot of explosive."

"I did say so."

"Seeing is believing." She turned and scrutinised the elevator and stair well too. "Have you looked at the lower levels?"

"That is why I brought you." His hand was still resting on her wrist and this time he closed his fingers so that he was actually holding her by the arm. "Shall we?"

Again, there was no waiting for consent or for the assassin to prepare herself for the crushing darkness. It was less than an instant later that the floor under their feet changed slightly in texture and Natasha pushed him away from her.

"Don't do that again!"

"I may have to if you wish to leave this place." Loki wasn't even focussing on his companion, instead staring around at the large empty space they stood in.

It was meant to be a huge underground warehouse, and the size of the place certainly agreed with that, but it was completely and utterly empty of anything useful. There were rows upon rows of empty metal shelves, not a loose screw or smudge of dirt left to tell of what had lain there. It was not hopeful.

"Damn." Loki stepped up to one of the nearest sets of shelves, reaching out with a tendril of magic to see if he could discern what had been there. Behind him a sudden clicking started up and he looked back to see Natasha holding out her phone.

"Geiger counter." She said in answer to the unasked question. "Tony can do amazing things to technology; the apps on this thing beggar belief." She began waving it towards the shelves in turn. "We're here for the nukes and whatnot, might as well at least see if they were ever here to begin with."

"There are spells that can do that."

"I'm sure there are, but if I can sort out the radioactive readings, you could be doing something else. Search for life signs or something."

Loki felt the familiar prickle of irritation at having his skills casually brushed aside, but tamped it down. He and Natasha hadn't worked together before, there were bound to be difficulties. The fact that he could already sense the background hum of radiation in the area probably wasn't worth mentioning. At any rate, he couldn't narrow it down to any one place so might as well let the woman use her little machine. Instead he sent out other tendrils of magic.

"There were people here, about a month ago." He said quietly. "Not many, but they had been living here for some time. They left very suddenly."

They began walking down one of the rows of shelves, Natasha slowly waving her phone over each one.

"Can you tell if they were the ones who took the weapons?"

The spell curled through the air, scenting out the gentle auras left behind by the men who had lived in the place. Humans left behind a subtle energy, very different to Aesir – which he was more used to searching for – but enough that he could still trace.

"There's no sign of any new people entering here in the past month beyond us. Whoever was here cleaned the place out."

"Big undertaking for what would have been a skeleton crew of guards." The Geiger counter began clicking furiously at one of the shelves and Natasha made a note of the area on another app on the phone.

"Not if they had been planning it months in advance."

"So you think they were Hydra then?"

"It would make sense."

Natasha glanced up from the screen of her phone to watch Loki walking infront of her. He had his hands by his sides, slowly twisting them to and fro as if he were running his fingers through long grass or water.

"How does it work? How can you tell who was here?"

The God didn't bother to look back at her. "All living creatures have an electromagnetic signature. Even you humans know this. I can simply sense it, with the right assistance."

"Even a month later?"

"In a closed environment like this, where there has been little to no disturbance, yes."

Natasha wasn't entirely sure she believed him, but from the back it was much much harder to tell if the God of Lies was living up to his namesake. It was easy enough to assume that he had massively simplified a very difficult magical concept so that she would stop annoying him.

Loki heard the woman huff quietly and grinned to himself. They were nearly half way down the row of shelving and so far he had picked up the remnants of atomic material, as well as biochemical weaponry. It was a worrying notion that such things were in Hydra's hands, although they all knew that bombs were the least of their problems.

He was about to suggest moving down to the next level when there was a sudden high-pitched snap behind him.

"Fuck…"

He turned to see Natasha frozen in place, looking down at her leading foot

"What was that?"

The woman took a shaky breath and looked up at him, a grim smile beginning to form across her face.

"That was a land mine. That I have just trodden on."

"What?!"

"This place is mined…" Natasha closed her eyes and licked suddenly dry lips, calculating. "If you leave now you won't be caught in the blast." She held up a hand to stop his protest. "No, listen to me. We don't know how big this is, or whether or not it is linked up to others. We've already seen that there is enough explosive here to take a chunk out of this mountain; you need to get the others to safety."

"Do not be ridiculous, I cannot leave you here." Loki stepped back towards her and she shifted her weight unconsciously. There was another click and they both froze again.

"Go…"

"No." The trickster looked down at the thick linoleum covering the whole floor of the place. There was no imperfection in the smooth plastic, meaning that it had probably been laid down on top of the mines – if there were more, which was likely. He hadn't been monitoring what was under their feet – which he could now see was a massive oversight. So much for assuming only the doors were armed…

Sweeping a hand out around him he tried to feel out the deadly technology hidden under the floor. A bright blip in his peripheral warned him of another trap close by, but he was safe enough to step up to Natasha. The magic feedback told him that the mine under her foot was linked up to the others nearby.

"I don't know what you're thinking of doing, but this thing is going to go off." She said, far too calmly.

"These things can be deactivated."

"By experts."

"I will fetch Tony."

"No. If…When this goes off it's going to blow the whole area. That will affect the local town."

"Actually, it is worse than that. We are sitting directly over the volcanic system – an explosion of this size could easily trigger an eruption."

"Damn." The woman had stared death in the face one too many times to be fazed by her own demise, but it was terrifying to think what the consequences of her one small footstep might be.

"I can try to at least break the link between this mine and the others. That way if it goes off it will not set off anything else."

"Do you know how?"

"No." Loki held out his hand. "Give me your ear piece – I destroyed mine."

Natasha managed a shaky smile as she handed the tiny thing over. Loki fitted it and turned it back on.

"Tony, I need your help."

"What's happened?"

"They mined the place and Natasha has stepped on one. It is primed and ready to blow if she moves her foot."

"Shit!"

"It's wired up to others in the area and all of those are linked to the doors. If this all blows it will easily take out the nearby town and possibly trigger the volcanic system under us."

There was another stream of curses from Tony's end of the line.

"What are you going to do?"

"We need all of you to leave this instant. And in the meantime talk me through disarming this thing."

"Like fuck am I-"

"Tony, now. No questions, no refusals, do what I say." Sometimes it was easy to forget what Loki truly was. God, trickster, lover, husband. Those were all things Tony was used to. Loki the battle commander took Ironman by surprise.

The command was given by someone used to having their every word obeyed without question, and such was the authority that Tony found himself doing as he was told before he even realised it.

"Fine. I either need to be in there or at least need to see what we're working with."

That was easier said than done.

"I can magic the linoleum out of the way and take a photo?"

"No magic! You've got no idea how sensitive it is! Cut the lino away and don't touch a thing."

Loki rolled his eyes and sat down infront of Natasha, pulling a knife out.

"Know what you're doing?" She asked, a small smile making a valiant attempt to stay on her face.

"Not so much. Just…do not move." Loki scanned the area around her foot, tracing out the general shape and size of the mine so that when he then started cutting through the thick flooring he didn't hit it. The knife was crafted by the Dwarves of Nidavellir and made short work of the thick plastic as he carefully carved a large circle out around Natasha's foot. Once the circle was cut out he then began to trim it down until there was a glint of metal underneath.

"Ah, there it is."

"What can you see?" Black Widow was unable to see anything from her angle.

"Not much. Give me a moment."

Slowly the lino was cut away, revealing more and more of the mine until all that was left was the last piece of flooring directly under Natasha's foot that couldn't be removed without disturbing the volatile weapon.

"There we go."

"Can you take a photo?" Tony asked across the coms.

"We are currently quite deep underground."

"Yeah, and? Use your phone – I made those things to cope with anything. A little concrete won't stop it working."

Loki did as he was told, pulling out the Stark Industries mobile and finding the camera app to take a photo, making sure to include the wire assembly that linked the mine to others in the area.

"You look quite good down there at my feet." Natasha was obviously trying to keep a cool head and taking the piss was doing the job quite well.

"Don't get used to it." Loki didn't bother to look up, trying to work out how to send the photograph. "Tony, have you got it yet?"

"Give it a moment…Ah. Yeah, there it is…"

There was a worryingly long silence following that and Loki frowned. "What? What is wrong?"

"Damn! They had to do it this way!"

"What way? How do I deactivate this?"

The silence was a better answer than anything Stark could have said.

"Tony, By the Norns if you don't talk to me in the next second I will throw out the next window we come across! How do I deactivate this?!"

"You can't!" Tony shouted back. "Those things are fucking tamper proof! Anything you try to do will set it off."

His voice was loud enough for Natasha to hear and she let out a shaky breath. "Can we at least disconnect it from the others so that the whole place won't go up?"

"…no."

Loki scowled. "So what do we do?"

"I DON'T KNOW! For fucks sake give me a moment to think!"

"We do not really have a moment!" Loki was kneeling down but readjusted his legs to cross them instead. "Give me answers Tony."

"I…Just…" It was actually frightening to hear the genius at a loss, struggling to find a way out of the situation.

"Anytime now would be good."

"How cold can you go?"

"What?!"

"If you go blue, how cold can you get?"

"I have no idea; it is not something I have experimented with, nor the problem at hand here."

"No, no, no, hear me out! It might be possible to freeze the components so that they can't start the reaction. How cold can you get?"

The idea made some sense so Loki bothered to put a little thought into his answer. "Jötnar can have been known to reach around 200 Sigurds, which is around 60 Kelvin in your human terms."

"60K? That's liquid oxygen territory."

"I can possibly go colder if I use my magic."

Tony's sigh of relief was audible and he began to explain which components to tackle first, since Loki wouldn't be able to keep an earpiece in at those temperatures. The idea would work in theory, since even a highly volatile explosive couldn't work if the reactive parts were frozen solid. The only problems were doing it carefully enough so that Loki didn't accidently set something off before he was done, or that he didn't rush and flash freeze Natasha's foot in the process.

"You okay to do this?"

"I have little choice. Is everyone out of the area?"

"Yeah, all clear."

Loki didn't allow for any 'good luck's or other sentimental things since they had no time for such things. Instead he simply removed the earpiece and handed it back up to Natasha – although she didn't put it back on. Shuffling back a little he laid himself down on his stomach to be eye-level with the mine and after a brief moment of concentration saw his hands infront of him flush blue.

He had genuinely never seen the point in experimenting much with his birth-form, but the little that he did know was that he could fluctuate his temperature. That time he had frozen Tony's arm – accident or not – had been the coldest he had ever attempted so he started with that as his base temperature. He heard Natasha gasp and smiled to himself.

"Not too cold for you, I hope."

"Don't be so full of yourself I grew up with Russian winters."

"If Midgard can manage to have a winter this cold I would be astonished." His words were teasing, but the tone distant as he tried to focus on one of the few Aesir temperature spells that he knew of. It would be too much to expect to lower his whole core temp down below his natural state, but a hand or finger would be feasible.

Natasha swore in Russian as Loki went from cold to a positive vacuum for heat, sucking any warmth from the vicinity to where he lay on the floor, concentrating fully on the magic. His natural limit was around 60K but heavy spell work was dropping him down to nearly 20K, -400F. Nothing on Earth was naturally that cold, and only with some serious scientific engineering could people take helium down to that level to freeze it.

"That should do it." His right hand had gone from dark to light sky blue as frost sparkled across it, the very air around them solidifying as it made contact with the limb. Even as a frost giant he was feeling cold.

Natasha closed her eyes so that she didn't have to watch as Loki gingerly pressed a finger against one of the screws in the mine's outer casing. Her whole body was tensed, prepared for the ripping, searing explosion that she was certain was going to happen at any moment. There was a tinkling noise and she flinched.

"Do not move."

"I didn't."

"Hmm."

The woman cracked an eye open to see the remains of the shattered screw crumbled under her foot and Loki already freezing the next one. He smirked slightly.

"I would not have expected a hardened assassin such as you to be so scared of death."

Natasha snorted. "I'm not afraid of dying, but I am rather against the idea of blowing up a city of people and setting off a volcanic eruption."

"Of course." Loki didn't even look up, his gaze riveted to the mine. "How is that ledger looking these days? Still red?"

"No doubt in a better state than yours."

"I'm sure." The casing that wound around the circumference of the mine was finally loose and Loki let the whole piece of metal freeze over so that it could not trigger a reaction as he pulled it off. This time there was no flinch and he was pretty certain Natasha was trying to prove a point. He could now see the inner workings of the weapon, although only a side-on view, and took a moment to determine what to work on next.

"Can't you just freeze the whole thing in one go?"

"Of course, but I think you quite like your foot, do you not? I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't freeze it solid by accident."

"Ah…okay then. Take your time."

"I am."

Natasha's balance was perfect and she was at the peak of physical fitness but that wasn't going to stop her leg from cramping up in such an awkward position.

"Have you and Barton talked about the possibility of becoming immortal yet?"

"Yeah. As you can imagine, it's currently at the front of my mind."

"And?"

Natasha shrugged lightly. "I think we're both going to say yes. I don't particularly want to live forever, but it would be nice to heal up some old injuries that have been bugging me. I can always do something about the immortality should it eventually wear thin."

"Injuries?"

"With my lifestyle are you surprised? There's a bullet wound in my torso that has never stopped aching, my left ankle was shattered when I was in my teens and still causes the occasional problem, I can't put my full weight on my right knee any more, a few torn muscles that have never been the same since. That sort of thing."

Loki smiled slightly. "Ah, the life of a hardened assassin. I assume that Barton is thinking along the same lines?"

"Pretty much, although given that he's that little bit older than me he's also got some aging issues to get rid of."

"Bad eyesight doesn't suit an archer."

Natasha nodded, although Loki couldn't see since his full concentration was obviously elsewhere. Every now and then she could feel a vibration through the weapon under her foot, and there was the occasional disquieting tinkling sound. She had faced death many times in her life, and had actually been through the whole step-on-a-mine thing before, so it was not her own demise that was the problem, but rather the consequences for the surrounding area.

And she was absolutely freezing.

"Do you think the other bases are set up like this?" She asked quietly.

"Most likely." Loki sat back and looked up at her. "There. I believe that's done. I've frozen all of the main components, as well as the links to the other explosive devices."

"You believe it's done?"

"Well, I am no expert." He was fading from deep blue back to his Aesir colouring and the room temperature began to go back up. "There's only one way to find out." He stood up and held a hand out to her.

Natasha stared at it like it was a venomous snake.

"You are going to have to trust me on this. At some point you will take your foot off that mine; you may as well get it over with."

"And if you've failed I'll be blown to kingdom come."

"If I've failed we both will, you seem to think I'm going somewhere."

They both stared at each other, daring the other to blink, to look away. Loki still had his hand held out, obviously not expecting to be trusted but not giving up either. Natasha had a stare like a cobra and seemed to be looking right through him as she weighed up her complete and utter lack of options. Since Loki was right; sooner or later if the mine was going to go off, it would do so.

"Alright; let's see if you've killed anyone this time around." It was a harsh remark and somewhat unwarranted when Loki had put quite a bit of effort into trying to save her, but he didn't comment. Rather, a charming smile that promised a world of hurt after all the stress was over graced the tricksters face and he took her hand.

"By all means, let's see what the body count is."

Natasha looked down at her foot, then placed all of her weight onto the other, very slowly lifting up off of the activated weapon, stepping towards Loki.

There was a clunk as the mechanism moved, drawing two horrified gazes down to it. Then another click.

The sudden blur of movement took Natasha by surprise. One moment she was stepping away from the mine, the next she had been swept forwards and down to the ground. Every part of her body was tensed, preparing for the blast that she knew would kill her.

Something made a cracking noise.

"Oh. It appears that it worked." Loki sounded beyond relieved.

Black Widow looked up to see the prince crouched over her, his body between her and the weapon. He wouldn't have actually been all that effective as a shield, but it surprised her he had even made the effort.

As it was, Loki hadn't needed to bother with his chivalrous gesture, since even as they both raised their heads to look the mine fell apart, sparkling with thick frost. Components were disintegrating, the metal crumbling under the intense cold and spilling out across the floor.

"It worked." Natasha let out the breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. Loki stood up, still somewhat cautious, and approached the broken pieces of metal. He gingerly poked at one of the lumps with his boot.

"Well, that will be a good way to dispose of the rest of this place then."

"You're going to freeze the whole base?"

"I can certainly try. We cannot leave all of the live explosives as they are."

Natasha rose to her feet as well, brushing the frost from her legs. They'd dressed for a cold climate, but even so her clothes hadn't been made to withstand the temperatures Loki had created and the whole area was absolutely freezing. The hood of her winter coat sparkled with ice crystals and her breath was a fog in the air. Apparently her companion hadn't come back up to a decent body temperature yet since his breath was still invisible.

"I'm going to send you back to the quinjet, then I'll start freezing this place. Tell the others to get going and I will meet you all back at the tower."

"What? Just leave you to it?"

Loki turned enough to glance at her condescendingly. "Yes, unless you don't like the idea of leaving me alone with this amount of raw explosive. If you stay you will end up as a permanent frozen feature. It worked for Captain America, but I don't think a few decades on ice will suit you as well."

"It would ruin my hair." The woman shot back, entirely deadpan. "However, we've only seen two levels of this place – there are at least three more."

"And we have already nearly set off one explosion. I will have a quick look at the other floors but it is most likely that they are in the same condition." Loki kicked the mine again, scattering the fragments now that he was certain it was safe. "And besides, if this goes wrong I would rather just blow myself up."

"Now who's worried about their ledger?" Natasha grinned as Loki glared at her, evidently annoyed at being caught out in showing some thought for another team-member.

"See you later Miss Romanoff." The trickster didn't give her another chance to try and argue as he simply reached out and touched her shoulder.

"Hey-!" The disgruntled interjection was cut short as Natasha suddenly vanished from the area and Loki smirked before turning back to look at the explosives visible on the far door. "Right…"

The temperature rapidly began to drop again.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

Natasha was safely delivered back to the quinjet by the spell, where the others were waiting, and as per Loki's instructions she insisted that they left and returned to New York.

The atmosphere on the aircraft was terse and somewhat embittered by failure. Whilst the mission hadn't necessarily gone wrong, it had hardly been what they had expected or hoped for. Rather than rescuing or destroying large amounts of old Shield equipment they were going home empty handed with no new leads and no idea what had happened. It was also rather embarrassing that such a large group of them had gone out, and only two of them had done anything useful.

Tony and Thor had been less than enthusiastic about leaving the trickster behind, but since they couldn't contact him there was little they could do about it beyond hoping that he could successfully destroy the rest of the explosive devices in the base and make it safe.

It was breakfast time back in New York, and Evie greeted them with freshly ordered pizza and coffee that was demolished almost at once. She also had the news that Jane Foster had been calling almost non-stop that made at least Bruce and Thor look guilty that they hadn't even thought to tell the physicist that they had returned from Asgard – and they had been back for just that little too long now for it to be polite to have not told her.

Thor left to make the call and explain what had happened and Bruce decided to go with him so that it wasn't just the thunder God taking the fall. With them gone Natasha dragged Clint off to the gym to sort out the residual stress from having been stuck on top of a primed bomb for a significant part of her working day.

Evie had her school work taking up the desk in the living room and left the others to it as she went back to studying and gradually the rest of the group dispersed out to either discuss their next steps or to work on other projects. Steve especially wanted to go through some new leads on the Winter Soldier and dragged Sam off with him. No doubt Sam would have tried to get Natasha to join them had she still been there – there was definitely a little bit of infatuation going on there.

Finally the room was empty apart from Evie doing her work and Tony sat on the sofa nervously watching his tablet screen where he was monitoring the satellite images of Iceland. Basically he was waiting to see if there was going to be a massive explosion or not. They were sat there for over an hour before the silence was broken.

"Is Möðhy going to be home any time soon?" The girl looked up from her essay on utilitarianism to glance at Tony.

"Unless he decides to blow up half of Scandinavia. And I wouldn't put it past him to set off a volcanic eruption just for the hell of it."

"He wouldn't, would he?"

"He's the God of mischief, go figure." Tony flicked the image off his screen and brought up some data sheets instead, sorting through them. "He'll be fine; it's Iceland I'm worrying about."

"What's going to happen with Hydra now?"

"No idea." He sounded distracted as his gaze flicked over the readings on his tablet. "No doubt they'll rear their ugly heads sooner rather than later."

"Should we worry?"

"About what?"

Evie rolled her eyes, putting her pen down to glare at her father. "Uh, how about the global threat Hydra poses? How about the fact that they could blow us up at any moment and we're just sitting here? How long did it take you guys to decide to go to Iceland, only for there to be bugger all there?"

"Don't swear."

"Oh my God! Dad, are you even listening to me?!"

"What?" Tony finally deigned to look up at her only to be on the receiving end of a teenage death-glare. "Look, I'm trying to sort something out for the next mission. We need a minesweeper of some sort for next time and I need to work that out." He was already back to sketching something out on the tablet. "And don't you have an essay to write?"

"Like you care!" Evie slammed her text book shut. "Can you at least tell me what's going on?! You guys vanished at three in the morning and Jarvis had to let me know where and why! Is this what it's going to be like now?! You guys always included me in what was happening; I've always known where you were going and the bare bones of what the mission was. But now I haven't got a clue! The moment it suddenly becomes important I'm left out of the loop!"

"For God's sake Evie! There is no 'loop', and you're fourteen! You are not an Avenger and you shouldn't expect us to tell you everything!"

"Well you always have up until now! What's changed?! Ooh, some super scary Nazi's have suddenly popped up and you all seem to think this is the end of the world! Come on! Hydra's a fucking joke and has you guys spooking at shadows!"

"Evelyn-!"

"And you won't tell me! I don't have a clue what's going on here, or what happened with Uncle Steve and Auntie Tasha. And no-one knows where Uncle Nick is, which I hate and it's scaring me and I want to know! What's so bad that you won't tell me?!" Evie looked absolutely furious, and having one of those rare moments when she bore more resemblance to Loki than Tony. "I've been having to piece information together for myself these past few days and it would be so much easier if I was just told stuff! What is going on?!"

"They were going to blow up the tower, Evie!" Tony hadn't intended to blurt it out in quite such a manner, but when his daughter started screaming at him he couldn't help but scream back.

"What…?" The anger drained from Evie's expression almost as quickly as it had appeared. "What do you mean?"

The inventor groaned and ran a hand down his face. "They were going to blow up the tower. The thing that happened with Steve and Natasha whilst we were away; well, it was bad, Birdy, really bad. Hydra got their hands on Shield's Helicarriers and were targeting people they thought were a threat."

"Well obviously Ironman is a threat."

"They took it a step further. I was too hard to target, so they targeted the whole tower."

"But…all the people here…"

"Yup. They would have killed us all. This whole tower, everyone in it and anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby."

Evie opened her mouth then closed it again, trying to comprehend that. She had had a vague idea that something bad had been planned, but had assumed that it was a set of assassinations, not something quite so…ruthless. It was a huge thing for a fourteen year old to understand.

"But…we were in Asgard…"

"They didn't know that. The intent was there. They wanted us dead."

"Auntie Pep…"

"Yeah. Happy that you know now?" Tony had evidently lost his patience entirely. "I didn't want you to know all of that, I didn't want to scare you, but you evidently think you're old enough so, fine."

"Well I have to be bloody old enough if this is our life now! You guys keep calling this a war and so fine, we're at war and I don't know if you've noticed, but kids don't do so well in war-zones! Age has nothing to do with it – the bad guys don't care how old or young someone is, they just kill them! So don't tell me that I'm too young for this shit, or too young to know what's going on; because they don't care!" Evie was almost eerily calm as she said her piece matter-of-factly. "Was I meant to be in the tower when they were going to hit it?"

"We can only assume so…"

"There we go then. I'd have died. I think I should know about these things." The girl was looking straight ahead out of the window, staring unseeing at the city skyline. "I've had enough of worrying about my parents dying in random sets of circumstances; it's about time I had a chance to worry about myself in that situation."

"Do you really think I'd let that happen, Evie?"

"Do you really think you could stop it?"

They met each other's gaze, vicious green hitting concerned brown head-on. Evie had certainly inherited Loki's death-glare and knew how to use it. Tony was pretty damn good at staring contests, but couldn't hold his own in this one and looked away with an irritated sigh.

"You know what? I could stop it, and I know that because I've done it before." He placed the tablet down beside him on the sofa and folded his arms. "I've caught missiles before, I can do it again and I will do if it means protecting you."

"Since when have you caught a missile?! Last time you went up against something serious you ended up half dead in your lab with Uncle Bruce trying to get your heart going again!"

Ah. Tony felt like with that comment the whole conversation had come into focus for him. Evie wasn't just frightened for what the future could hold – she didn't have the faith that her family could protect her from it either.

"Birdy, do you not trust me?"

Evie shrugged listlessly, refusing to display some sort of emotion about it. "You can't protect me from everything, Dad. If Hydra want to blow up this tower they'll do it, no matter what you try to do to stop them."

"No. They won't. I meant it about catching missiles; that wasn't an analogy." Tony wanted nothing more than to go over to his daughter and give her a hug but knew that in her current emotional state he was likely to end up with a pen in his eyeball if he tried.

"Go on then. Tell me. Make me believe that it's possible to stop an evil group of super-villains from blowing the shit out of us!"

The unspoken 'make me trust you, Dad' made Tony ignore the swearing for once.

"Fine. You know that old story where your Möðhy decided to take over the planet and brought in the chitauri to do it?" Tony didn't bother with sugar coating it, since if Evie was going to be harsh, he was going to meet her head on. "Well, whilst they were busy smashing the hell out of New York, Shield decided the best way to deal with them was to nuke them. Nuke the whole city. And Fury did his best but they managed to fire the damn thing anyway. When I heard it was coming in I met it by the bridge and I caught that little bastard and I…Well, I got rid of it."

"How?"

"I got rid of it. The how doesn't matter."

"It was stupid and reckless, wasn't it?"

"I. Got. Rid. Of. It. And saved New York in the process and I'm still here, so don't think I can't protect you."

Evie – entirely unconvinced – looked up at the ceiling. "Jarvis. What did he do to get rid of it?"

"Jarvis don't answer that!"

"Jarvis!"

The Ai actually stuttered as one programming system took over another and he tried to prioritised which person to answer. Finally he decided on the best option.

"Sir, Miss Evelyn. This is your fight; please do not involve me in it."

"But Jarvis…."

"I refuse to pick between you!"

Tony smirked, since by refusing to answer Jarvis was basically doing what the man had wanted him to do. "Good boy, Jarv."

"I'm not on your side either, sir!" For emphasis Jarvis hit the light circuits in the room, making them flash like stadium lights, momentarily blinding both occupants and drawing a startled squawk from Evie.

"For God's sake." Tony leant over his knees, rubbing his eyes until the flashing stars went away. "There was no need for that, Jarvis!" He looked up to see Evie blinking hard and trying to get her sight back into focus. "You okay kiddo?"

"Fine."

"I think I'm going to ban that word in this tower, it only means bad things."

"Whatever."

There was a moment of silence between them before Jarvis spoke up again.

"Will you both behave now? Sir, I suggest you tell your daughter the truth. Miss Evelyn, please give your father the benefit of the doubt, his actions saved the entire city, all of the Avengers, and technically your mother, although that wasn't his main intention."

"As I recall, Loki was left as a greasy smear in the floor of this very room at the time." Tony said quietly. "And I can't say he was my focus at that point."

"Dad, what happened?"

Stark looked at the girl briefly, then shook his head. "Evie…"

"There was a wormhole over this tower." Loki's quiet voice took both of them by surprise, shocked to see him suddenly there in the doorway. "It was how I had brought the chitauri here using the tesseract. Your father caught the missile mid-flight and took it up through the portal into the midst of the army. He stopped the entire chitauri army almost single handed."

"And…?" Evie asked tentatively.

"And my suit shut down entirely; I barely made it back out of the portal and from what I was later told the Hulk saved me from becoming an Ironman shaped crater." Stark said softly.

"You nearly died." The girl summed up quietly.

"…Yeah." Tony glanced at Loki out of the corner of his eye. "And how did you know any of that? You'd been Hulk-smashed by that point."

"Even a Puny God can keep tabs on what's happening in a battle." Loki looked simply exhausted, one hand holding onto the door-frame as he looked between his spouse and daughter. "Now what exactly has been going on here? I've just spent the past…" He glanced at the clock on the wall. "Past four hours deactivating bombs piece by piece, expecting one to go off at any moment and was hoping to come back to something rather calmer than this. What's happened?"

Evie glanced at her father, then down at her closed text book. "Nothing."

"Well something has obviously gone on if I find you two trying to kill each other and Jarvis having a minor freak-out in a corner!" Loki came into the room, and closer-to it was obvious that he had used up the very last dregs of his energy in sorting out the Hydra base. He ignored the hand Tony stretched out to him and chose to slump down onto the thick-pile rug instead, sitting equidistant between his partner and child. "Now someone tell me what's happening because I am simply too tired to work it out on my own and frankly I don't want to either."

The two Stark's looked at each other again and the girl gave a little 'go-ahead then' shrug, prompting Loki to turn his gaze expectantly on his husband.

Tony groaned and ran a hand down his face. "Christ, this day has sucked. Fine. We were having a bit of a row because teenagers express fear as anger and it was the only way Evie was going to let me know what was going on in her head."

Loki turned his head to raise an inquisitive eye-brow at his daughter. "Okay, and what are you frightened of, Evelyn?"

The teen shrugged mulishly. "I never said I was frightened."

Tony rolled his eyes. "You didn't need to say it, kiddo. It was perfectly clear what was going through your mind." His gaze met Loki's again. "She knows that Hydra targeted the tower and that's freaked her out a bit."

The trickster frowned. "I thought we weren't going to mention it."

"Yeah well, plans change."

Loki nodded slightly, but was looking confused again. "Even so, Evelyn, you must know that you're safe here. You live with a team of super-heroes; we will not let anything happen to you."

"Yeah. Except that I've seen Dad lifeless on the floor of his lab with Uncle Bruce unable to bring back a heartbeat, you snatched away from right infront of us and powerless to stop it and both times none of the others could do anything to help either of you!"

"You probably don't remember it very well, but I was winning the fight with the chitauri initially. I would have won overall if not for their underhand tactics."

"You mean using me as bait."

"Exactly. And remember what happened to the chitauri in the end?"

"Kablooie. But it took a very long time to get to that point."

"But were you protected? Did I get you out of that situation?"

Evie shrugged slightly, unwilling to delve too deeply into the memories of that chitauri attack when Loki had been captured. "I guess."

"Evelyn; did I or did I not sort that situation out and get you to safety?"

"Yeah! To the detriment of your own welfare! You let yourself be captured and they had you for seven fucking years! How do you think that made me feel?! You think I should feel safe when my safety depends on your self-sacrifice?!" Evie rounded on Tony furiously. "And you! You say you saved the city, but it was only by nearly killing yourself! You destroyed that drone, and nearly killed yourself! Every time you try to save someone you just end up at deaths door! That's why I don't trust you guys! You can't keep up with this altruistic bullcrap – I need you here and if that sounds selfish then I don't care!"

Tony gaped at her. These were thought's he'd had himself, so to hear them coming from his little girl, to know that she felt so badly about it was heart-breaking. She didn't trust them, and after stating her reasons it made sense why she didn't.

"We are not infallible." Where Tony was lost for words, Loki seemed to still have some left. "Neither your father nor myself are indestructible, however much we might think and act as if we are. When a parent is fighting for their child they will use any weapon available. And if that weapon happens to be the parent's own freedom or their own life then they will use it. Right here and now that may seem selfish to you; you cannot see why we would put ourselves in the firing line and risk our lives so casually. Well, believe me my child, when you are a mother you will realise that you would do anything to keep your little one safe."

"But-"

"No buts Evelyn! I have had to see two of my children die; do not blame me for never wanting to go through that again! You are the most precious thing on this planet and if anything tries to harm you I will do whatever it takes to stop that situation! My life is not worth anywhere near as much as yours!"

Evie snapped her mouth shut, tears glimmering in her eyes. Loki had sounded angry. Not just intense or emotional, but seriously angry and she had never experienced that aimed at her before. Sure, she and Tony had fought like cat and dog in the past, but she had never argued with Loki – had never had a chance to really. It was jarring to bring out that side of him.

"Oh for Norns sake!" Loki rose to his feet, running a hand through his dishevelled hair in frustration as he turned away to pace towards the bar area. "There's no need for tears Evelyn!"

"How can you say that?!" Chastisement be damned, Evie was beginning to cry. "You sit there and tell me that you're willing to throw your life away for me and you think that won't make me cry? What the fuck?!"

Tony looked helplessly between his angry and pacing husband and their sobbing teenage daughter. This was precisely the kind of situation that as a family they had not experienced before and it was unhelpful to be struggling with it when all three had other problems and stress to deal with.

"Jarv', can you get some hot chocolate going, I think we need it."

Loki shot him an indecipherable glance and it was impossible to tell if he agreed or was frustrated by this. Evie just sniffed and ignored him entirely.

"I can't believe I'm going to be the adult in this conversation, but…we need to sort this out. Properly. I mean, we can't go on like this if we don't trust each other or feel safe."

"Safe!" Loki snorted in dark amusement. "Do any of us actually know what that feels like?"

"You are not helping here!" Tony didn't stand up but sat a little straighter, bringing in his boardroom voice. "This needs sorting out. We're at war and in the middle of that we're falling apart as a family. Hell, we've hardly even had a chance to be a family yet and we're already failing at it. Something needs to be done!"

"How?!" Loki looked like he was unravelling as he turned on his partner, anger only barely masking absolute despair. "How do we make this better? How do we fix this?! Our child doesn't trust us, you and I are spending more time fighting than talking…How do we fix this?" He was desperately clinging to anger but broken desperation was showing around the edges and Tony knew that were it just the two of them the God would have already dropped the pretence. However, that wasn't something he felt able to do with Evie there; he didn't want her to see him just as scared as she was.

Tony shook his head slowly. "I…I don't know. I don't know what we can do."

Evie sniffed again, finding the remains of a tissue in her pocket and wiping her nose. "This sucks." She wasn't watching her parents, but looked up when she heard a sudden sob. "Möðhy?"

Loki ran a hand hurriedly across his face, half-turning away. "Sorry." It wasn't obvious if there were actually tears or not but his eyes had taken on a red tinge. "I do not think this is going to be something that will sort itself out just by us sitting here having this conversation."

"What do you suggest?" Tony asked quietly.

"I don't know."

"Personally I don't want to be having this conversation anymore." Evie muttered. There was a little bump against her ankle and she looked down to see one of the little scutter-robots carrying a mug of hot-chocolate on its flat back. The drink was gratefully received and out of the corner of her eye she could see two others being delivered to her parents. Loki stayed out to the side, distancing himself from his family and using the momentary break to compose himself.

Chocolate, especially hot chocolate, was always good at diffusing a bad moment.

Tony picked his tablet up, turning it back on after it had initiated idle shut-down. "I've been putting something into place that might at least make you feel a little better, kiddo." He said gently.

Evie huffed slightly, obviously not really believing or caring so her father continued.

"I've set up all of the spare suits – and that's a lot of suits – to allow Jarvis to integrate into each and every one of them. I mean, yeah, he could do it with the specially made ones, but now I've got him into all of them."

"So?" Evie didn't look impressed.

"So, it means that at any one time there are at least five suits, up and running and controlled by Jarvis. They will be patrolling the tower on strategic levels at all times. Or rather, he will be. Since it's just Jarvis, but in five bodies."

"You can do that?" Evie was at least listening now. "I thought he could only take over those suits you made specifically for him for the Pluto thing."

"I can do that. I mean, they're still my Ironman suits, he's just controlling them. However, I was also thinking about giving him one for his very own to live in permanently. We've discussed it and he's up for the idea, although his servers won't be moved. I don't want to risk losing him entirely if he goes down in a fight."

The girl was visibly looking happier now, and Loki was beginning to perk up slightly seeing her losing a little bit of the fear that had been gripping her. "Jarvis will actually have a body? He'll be here?"

"He'll be here, and if it makes you feel safer he can be with you at all times."

Because Tony and Loki might have had moments when they'd not been the invincible parents Evelyn needed, but Jarvis had never let her down and in most cases was the one who saved the day in her eyes. He'd certainly saved Tony's life more than once and infront of her no less. She didn't really have official Godparents, but Jarvis had taken it upon himself to fulfil that role.

"Would that help until we sort this mess out properly? I know it's not really solving the true issue here, but…"

"No, no it's good. I like it, it's a good idea." Evie was looking much brighter. "When will that be implemented?"

"He can take over my suits as of now and his own will be ready in…" Tony flicked through a few pages on his tablet. "Two days. That okay?"

"Will he be backing you up on missions as well?"

"He may do, but to begin with I want him here with you and –"

"Actually, sir, can I interject here?" Jarvis didn't wait for Tony to reply and continued on ruthlessly. "I believe at this point it is my opinion that matters. You created me to look after you and yours and this is what I shall do. If I am to have a body that will mean I will be entirely autonomous and I will be making my own decisions. I will decide what missions I help out on, and I can tell you here and now that unless there is some unusual circumstance I will usually choose to stay with Miss Evelyn. You are an adult and can make your own foolish decisions, so she is my priority."

Evie finally smiled. "Love you too, Jarv!"

Tony felt some of the residual tension drain as his daughter seemed receptive to the idea. "So is this okay then? You'll feel alright if you have Jarvis protecting you?"

"I still want promises that you guys are going to take better care of yourselves. No altruism."

"We can do our best. Don't forget we've got the Avenger's backing us up the whole time and you'll be protected so there shouldn't be any need to throw ourselves to the wolves." He met her smile with one of his own. "No altruism, right, Loki?"

The trickster stared back at him stony faced. "I'm not promising that."

"Loki…"

"I just…I can't promise something about a future I can't see." Loki saw his daughter's face fall again and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I…I cannot promise not to throw myself into harm's way if I see you in trouble. I just cannot." He placed his mug – the chocolate barely touched – down on the bar top. "I need to go."

And just like that he vanished.

Evie gaped at the empty space for a moment then turned to Tony wide-eyed.

"What the hell?!"

"I don't know kiddo. I'll talk to him, but I think throwing himself into harm's way is how he works." Because Tony vividly remembered how quickly Loki had surrendered to the chitauri to save Evie, that story of how he had nearly died to save Narfi and Vali, how he had sliced his own stomach open to give Sleipnir life. Loki historically had always sacrificed himself for his children. They couldn't expect him to stop now.

Evie finally, finally left her spot by her studies and slunk over to the sofa for a hug that Tony was more than willing to give.

"It's going to be okay, Birdy," He tucked her head under his chin, letting her cling as tight as she liked round his waist. "It's going to be okay."

"I like the Jarvis idea."

"Good, I'm glad. I think he likes the idea too. He's very over-protective."

"I don't mind; I don't think I'm doing a good job of coping right now."

"There's no right or wrong way to cope with crap like this. You're doing just fine."

Evie nodded but didn't say anything more.

They stayed like that for some time, Tony absentmindedly running his fingers through his daughter's hair, just simply being father and child. The fear in the atmosphere had dissipated at least, the tension drained away with this news about Jarvis. In some ways it hurt Stark to think that his little girl needed the extra assurance from an AI – that her parents weren't enough for her for to feel safe. On the other hand, with Jarvis they now had breathing space to work through the trust problems and that was at least a small silver lining.

Speaking of Jarvis…

"Sir, I am sorry to interrupt, but I believe your husband needs some assistance, he appears to be injured."

"Injured? Since when?!"

Everything streamed through Tony's head all at once as he sat up straight, dislodging Evie in the process. Had he missed something? Had Loki come in injured? Not that he'd seen, but that didn't mean the sly bugger hadn't been hiding it. Or had the God suddenly become clumsy and managed to trip over something?

Unlikely.

Stark extracted his arm from around his daughter's shoulders and she shifted away from him. "You okay if I go check…?"

"Yeah, sure." She sounded tired, not even bothering to be annoyed about it. "Is this why he couldn't promise?"

"…That hadn't occurred to me, but it might well be."

Evie pulled herself to her feet. "I'm gonna go play on my X-box."

"Birdy…"

"No, it's fine, Dad. If it's serious enough that Jarvis has to get you, then you'd better go." She looked back over her shoulder at him and smiled, a little at any rate. "And thanks. I know this sucks for all of us so…thanks."

WMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

Tony found his missing husband in their ensuite bathroom, leaning over the large bathtub. The water was muddy and a dull red, and whilst the black clothing didn't give any hint of blood, Loki's posture made it clear something was wrong.

"I thought you were looking after Evelyn."

"Jarvis told me you needed some looking after too."

"I'm fine."

"Yeah, 'cause the fact that you're refusing to look at me and sound like you're gritting your teeth really makes me think you're fine."

Loki could easily have responded in anger, but instead his shoulders simply slumped a little more. Yeah, he was really in pain.

"What's happened?" Tony's voice slipped from sarcastic to gently concerned. "Can I see?"

"I would rather you didn't."

"That bad, huh?"

"That bad."

"Considering you won't even turn round to look at me, I think I believe you. Look, I've seen you in the worst possible shape imaginable; so what's so bad now that you can't let me see?"

Loki laughed hollowly. "Fine." He slowly turned his head to look at his husband. "There, happy?"

"Shit…" The sight was horrific and Tony gaped at him in shock. "What happened?"

"I lost concentration on the last mine and it went off in my face. The rest were deactivated, so it was just the one, but…" Loki gestured at his face. At his lack of face. It was actually surprising that he could talk. However minor he was trying to make the explosion out to be, the injuries spoke for themselves.

Tony steeled himself to try and assess the extent of the mutilation.

Considering how close Loki had been whilst trying to deactivate the weapon it was unsurprising that it had succeeded in doing so much damage. His face was a mess of blackened and ripped muscle, his eyes almost comical in how they protruded without sockets, nose just an empty cavern and teeth gleaming white through the ruin where his mouth should have been. He had to be using magic to talk since he certainly didn't have the biological ability right now.

"Pulling the Harvey Dent look right now, Capricorn." Tony said quietly. "Except that it's your whole face, not just half."

He couldn't tell if Loki smiled or not, since the trickster currently didn't have enough facial structure to show an expression.

"You are too easy-going to be Batman."

"Meh, maybe. Can you heal?"

"Once I clean the mess off. I did what I could whilst there, but I had expended so much energy already I didn't dare do too much incase I couldn't get myself back. I still only barely had enough to hide it earlier – there was no way I was letting Evie see this in her state." Loki leant back into the bathtub and found the washcloth again. "I don't have it in me to clean out the soot and dirt, but I can heal the majority once I've done that manually."

"Here, let me." Tony took the flannel off of him, ignoring the equally bad state Loki's hands were in for the moment. "I'd tell you to close your eyes, but the whole lack of eye-lids thing might make that difficult."

"Admit it; this is the best Halloween look you have ever seen." Loki at least sounded like he was smiling even if it was impossible for him to do so. "If it is anything I have mostly blocked the pain so this is not hurting half as badly as it should be."

"Glad to hear it; you should be a moaning puddle of agony on the floor in this state." Tony wasn't a squeamish man, but it took a lot to start gently wiping away the muck caught within the ribbons of torn muscle. Loki rolled his eyes, and since they stood out so much with the surrounding flesh missing it was part-way disgusting and part-way ghoulishly comical. He evidently knew it must look so awful which was why he did it, drawing a laugh from Tony.

"Oh gross, man! You look like a cheap Halloween prop! And stop laughing! You're making this really difficult." Tony rinsed the cloth off and started cleaning around where Loki's nose should have been. Something glinted amongst the mess and with some careful digging he extracted a sliver of metal. "Did you know you've got some shrapnel in here?"

"It does not surprise me. And no, I am not letting put an arc reactor into my face."

"You're no fun. Can you at least remove the shrapnel with magic?"

Loki took a deep breath and a moment later the other small glints and gleams of metal began to vanish. On the sink beside them a pile of tiny metal scraps began to heap up.

Tony could tell the spell, however small, had taken a lot out of Loki and so stopped messing around and began paying more attention to what he was doing. There was a ridiculous amount of damage and to begin with he couldn't see how they were meant to fix it all.

However, after about fifteen minutes it was possible to see that some areas were beginning to heal, slowly but surely. Tony had to look away when Loki's nose made a reappearance, but other than that he was pretty pleased how he held up with all the blood and gore. He wasn't a doctor of medicine, he didn't usually deal with anything under the first-aid banner so it was unusual for him to have to sort out anything like this.

Finally – near to an hour later – Loki looked reasonably presentable again, his face back in one piece and other patches of damage to his shoulders and torso healing if not fully healed. He looked exhausted though – even if the pain was blocked he had used up every scrap of energy to complete the mission and was now running on fumes.

"So…other than a minor mishap with an explosive, how did the rest of it go?"

"Iceland is still standing, if that's what you are asking. I had frozen everything else solid and smashed them, so the whole place is now inert and safe. I also searched through the offices." Loki waved a hand vaguely and a manila envelope appeared in it. "I found this. There was a hidden safe, which had been thoroughly ransacked but there was a compartment within it that they hadn't found."

"What's in it?"

"No idea. I did not have chance to look."

Tony glanced at it again. "Save it for tomorrow?"

"We should tell the others."

The man heaved an overly dramatic sigh. "Fine! You go and have a look; I'll clean up all this mess."

It didn't take very long, since it was really only the bathtub that was covered in blood and muck and that didn't take so long to wash down. He saved the shrapnel since it was possible he could extrapolate some data from it and any little piece of information could be useful. He dumped the filthy washcloth in the sink to deal with later, washed his hands off and went back into the bedroom.

Loki was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, sat on the bed and scanning a couple of pieces of paper with a confused frown on his face.

"What's the word?" Tony threw himself down on the mattress next to his husband and tried to look over his shoulder.

"I am not certain; I don't recognise any of this. It makes no sense, just streams of numbers and Greek letters."

"Let's see." Stark took the three sheets of paper and began to look through them, biting on one thumbnail as he concentrated. The data looked familiar but even with his near-photographic memory he was struggling to place it. "It's something to do with wave functions, but I'll need to get Jarvis on it. And Bruce." He glanced at it again. "And Jane. To be honest it's kinda gibberish."

"So all of that for a piece of useless paper." Loki's voice said it all. He had spent most of his day having to painstakingly diffuse a whole base's worth of bombs and mines – complete with the added stress of nearly blowing up Natasha in the process – and had one go up in his own face. To come home to a terrified and angry teenager that decided it was a good time to tell him she didn't trust him, and then find out that the whole bloody day looked like a waste of time…

He wasn't impressed to say the least.

"Hey, the Avengers have done worse for less, if that's any consolation."

"Not really."

"Well there was this one time where we almost lost an entire Helicarrier trying to transport one smart-arsed bastard."

Loki smirked slightly at that. "Out of interest, who was it who had the bright idea to put the raving megalomaniac in a glass cage?"

"Fury."

"Well, he learnt that lesson."

Tony put the papers down on the bedside table and grinned at his husband. "To be honest, it was a good look. I liked the whole glass-cage set up. You were hot. I was all ready to go in there after Natasha had finished with you."

"Oh really? Perhaps I should have stayed around a little longer."

"Nah, we'd have missed out on our little chat in my living room. And I wouldn't have missed that sexual tension for the world!"

"Mmm, it was rather a moment." Loki leant forwards to tap his finger against the arc reactor. "And all things considered, I took you under my spell in the end. I have even ended up on top once or twice."

"Yeah, except that you much prefer not to be on top and we both know it." Tony grinned broadly, reaching out to pull Loki closer.

"Is now the time for this?"

"I think we're allowed to have some us time. We came back from Asgard expecting to be able to put a white picket fence around the tower and instead land slap bang in the middle of a war. Evie is alright for now, we deserve some time to ourselves."

Loki smiled slightly and this time allowed his husband to pull him close. "Fine, since you seem so insistent." He leant in to kiss Tony on the nose. "You are insufferable."

"And yet you suffer me." The man had that cocky little self-assured grin that never failed to charm. He cupped Loki's cheeks, thumbs skimming over the newly healed skin. It was as smooth as ever, as if nothing had ever happened and it was impossible to tell that only a few hours before Loki's core temperature had been hovering at near absolute zero. "You do know I love you, right?"

"If I remember correctly you found a way to cross the universe for me. I'd say that proves your feelings to be true." Loki settled his hands on Tony's waist, playing with the loops that held the man's belt in place. "I have seen a lot of strange things in my life – talking animals, trees that walk and fire guns, the void – but it's taken half a million years to find someone willing to do what you did for me."

"Trees with guns? Really?"

"That's what you picked out of that? Yes, trees with guns. Do not assume sentience though – he had a vocabulary of three words."

"How does that even-"

"Tony! Is that really the focus here?" Loki nipped at the man's chin with a quiet laugh. "Eyes on the prize please, Mr Stark." His wandering hands began to untuck Tony's shirt from his jeans, warm against Tony's back. The man subconsciously pressed into the contact and Loki kissed him, sinking his teeth into his lip.

"Fine, fine, fine, eyes on the prize, I get it." Tony pulled away laughing and licked the stinging cut he had just received. "You haven't bitten me like that since Evie was tiny!"

"Are you complaining?"

Tony's reply was to lean straight in for another kiss. This time however, he didn't let Loki get away with it and attacked back, pulling the trickster right up so that the taller man was straddling his lap. His hands slid down to cup under the trickster's buttocks, squeezing and he sniggered as Loki gasped. The inventor was always known to push his luck, and landed a solid slap on the firm flesh. That earned him another bite, sharp teeth digging deep into his lip again and there was a warm spurt of blood, iron across his tongue.

Tony began tugging at the t-shirt his husband was wearing, forcing Loki to break the kiss so that he could pull it up and over the God's head, entirely messing his hair up. There was no evidence left across Loki's torso of the wounds the explosion had caused, instead just an expanse of pale skin, and toned muscles. Tony leant down to close his lips over his lover's collar-bone and sucked a deep bruise, his hands wandering across the expanse of creamy skin.

"Tony…" The whisper was heated as Loki tipped his head back, his hands going up to run through the man's hair. He moaned, low and quiet in the back of his throat as Tony's fingers flicked across his left nipple.

"You're gorgeous when you just sit back and let me do what I like. And the jeans. I like the jeans."

Loki laughed, shifting his weight and leaning back a little so that his husband could reach the waist band of said jeans and begin trying to do something with the belt buckle.

"Why am I the only one losing clothes here?" He caught the hem of Tony's t-shirt and drew it up over the man's head so that they were both shirtless. "There, that's equalled it up a little." His fingers tapped across the arc reactor, tracing around the raised patterns the metal made. From the angle he was at the light was making his eyes glow a soft blue. "Sometimes I feel like I'm looking at your heart when I look at this."

"Sometimes it feels like it's my heart." Tony looked down to watch the long graceful fingers moving across the light and for a moment a memory sprang to his mind unbidden.

The fingers tap-tapped again before the shaking in them lessened slightly and the movement became more purposeful. Tony couldn't feel it, obviously, but in a very real way it felt like Loki was gently mapping out his whole heart. The digits ran slowly around the edge of the energy source, before sliding across the central glass again.

Loki caught his eye and his hand splayed out flat across the reactor as he leant in and kissed his husband again, the same memory evidently running through his mind too given the sudden desperation about it. Tony shifted backwards so that his back hit the headboard and he could fully wrap his arms around Loki without the fear of losing his balance.

Hands roamed and Loki's belt was removed as he knelt up to let Tony begin pushing the jeans down his hips.

There was a knock on the door.

Both men stilled, staring first at each other, and then towards the doorway incredulously.

"Sir, Thor is asking for you two to join the briefing."

Tony scowled and went back to ridding Loki of the jeans.

"Jarvis, tell Thor he has exactly two seconds to leave us the hell alone or Loki will turn him into a permanent ice-sculpture."

There was a moment's pause in which the two men got back to the business in hand and Loki began working on Tony's belt.

"Sir, Thor is insisting that he needs to speak to you."

"Fuck it; then tell him he can come in if he wants, but we are not responsible if he then needs to bleach his eyeballs because I'm fucking his little brother."

Loki chuckled. "That's cruel." His voice was hoarse as Tony's lips closed over his nipple.

"…Sir, Thor has left."

Tony hummed in response, which made his husband buck into him with a surprised groan as the vibrations sparked through him. The man's hands went back to trying to push down Loki's jeans, only to be batted away and a moment later the rest of their clothes vanished in a golden glow.

"There, now you can get on with it!"

Tony leant back enough to look up at the naked trickster who was still straddling his lap. "I do love that trick."

"This one's even better." Loki brought one of Tony's hands up to his mouth and pressed a kiss to each finger. As he did so each became slick and wet with oil.

"Yeah, yeah that one's great too." The man slipped his hands under his lover's thighs as the trickster knelt up. It was an awkward position but neither seemed to care as one of Stark's finger's found and began to circle Loki's entrance.

"Mmnnm, don't tease – Ah!" Loki's complaint was cut short as the finger suddenly breached his body and he arched back so that it could sink in as far as possible. His hands went up to grasp Tony's hair tightly as the man nipped at his throat and a moment later a second finger was added, causing him to rock his hips.

Stark grinned and sank his teeth into his husband's shoulder again as his fingers twisted and scissored, opening Loki up. The angle wasn't great so it took a few moments before he found the trickster's prostate and was able to rub against it, making Loki keen and buck into him. The two men moved against each other, the prince's hands going to grasp the headboard and lean over his lover as he ground down against the fingers.

"Enough…I want you…" His words were short, punctuated by gasps as he pulled up and away from the man's hand. He reached down between their bodies and wrapped slick fingers around Tony's cock, causing the man to groan and move his hips up into the contact as the oil coated him.

"You're…impatient…"

"Always…" Loki grasped the headboard again, looking down at the man expectantly.

Tony took himself in hand, holding steady as the trickster lowered down and he heard himself groan as the head of his erection slowly breached Loki's body.

"Tony…" Loki moaned deep in the back of his throat as he slowly lowered himself down until he was fully sat in Tony's lap. "Oh Norns…" Tremors were running through him as he tried to still, curling in so that his forehead was pressed against the man's, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"You okay?" Tony did a remarkable job of not immediately bucking up into the tight welcoming heat.

"…Just a moment…" The prince breathed deeply for a few seconds, chest heaving, before raising his head and grinning when he made eye contact. "Alright." He sat up straight and moved his hands from the headboard to his husband's shoulders.

From the position they were in it was difficult for Tony to actually move all that much, especially given how heavy the trickster was, so it was up to Loki to slowly raise himself up and lower back down again. Both groaned, although as always Stark was the quieter of the two whereas Loki had no inhibitions. It had to be killing the trickster's thighs – rising up and down so steadily – but he obviously had muscles of steel since the repetitive movement didn't seem to cause him any problems as he built up a steady pace.

Tony caught his husband's chin and pulled him into a sloppy kiss, his other hand snaking down to grip Loki's erection and begin stroking in time with the trickster's rhythm. Loki's nails were digging deep welts into the man's shoulders, possibly drawing blood but neither noticed or cared. To be honest it was probably fair play since they were chest to chest and the arc reactor was leaving indentations in the trickster's flesh where he pressed close.

"Mnn…Tony…" Of course Loki could never stay quiet; it was part of his charm and Tony wouldn't change it for the world. The trickster was moaning a litany of pleas and broken little snatches of sentences, shifting with increasing urgency, bucking into the callused hand on his cock.

They moved in complete tandem, each knowing what the other needed and giving and taking in equal measure. Kisses grew sloppier, hands grew more desperate and they picked up the pace in sync, hot and sweaty as they moved against each other.

Loki came first, howling as he spurted across Tony's hand. He wrapped his arms around the man's neck, gasping as he rode out the aftershocks with his face buried in Tony's shoulder. He could feel his husband still buried inside him, still hard and so close. The trickster managed to rock his hips a few more times until Tony released with a low groan and Loki whimpered as he felt it scalding hot inside him.

"Oh, I love you…" Tony's whisper was accompanied by his arms wrapping around Loki's waist, his forehead thumping onto the trickster's shoulder.

The prince chuckled quietly, pressing a kiss to the side of his husband's neck. "I'm pretty partial to you too."

There was a pause, a quiet moment as they both tried to get their breathing under control. Then Tony spoke again.

"…We should probably go to the briefing…"

"They won't miss us."

"Nah."

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

Le gasp! So irresponsible, boys!

(I have no idea what guns Sam uses, so I googled American personal defence weaponry and picked one that looked similar)