Anger broiled in Thanos' every fibre. For a week, the ship's computers had been working in overdrive, searching for anything they could dig up on 'Stark Industries'. This had led his purposeful gaze through a patchwork of news and security footage, a poor imitation of journalistic writing about his life, family and work and the brilliant finale that was his sorcerer's spectacular failure. He had seen a young, rage-filled man fly his ridiculous – if admittedly impressive given Earth's resources – suit; a soft man with his equally soft woman. A look of disdain spread across Thanos' face. Grainy images of missiles and warships flashed across his screens, eventually being replaced by machines of peace and global safety. Intense anger flared in his breast as he scanned a picture of the very same missile that had halted his mission.
His hand hovered over the controls. Four humans, a god and something in between formed a circle, seemingly hopeless against the onslaught of Chitauri and, at the centre, the fool who dared to cross a Titan.
Turning to Maw, Thanos waited for him to bow at his feet. "The humans can wait."
"As you wish. What about the sorcerer?" Maw's head kept low to abate his master's anger.
"Pay him no mind." Without waiting too long for further instruction, Maw dipped away.
Returning to the panel, he brought up every interplanetary database he could and searched for Loki Odinson. Boring. Dull. Predictable. Inevitable.
Then something caught his eye. More security footage from his ill-fated attempt to conquer a planet of largely defenceless humans – likely a throwaway comment, but it held so much potential. 'The rightful king of Jotunheim'. Now, that was interesting.
… … …
Taking apart a suit took almost as long as putting it together. Months had passed uneventfully since he first began to dissemble each of the hundreds of suits he had built without purpose. With concentration that only came from trying to forget something else, Tony took a blowtorch to the joints of the final suit and melted the seals, letting the metal parts fall to the floor with a hollow clang. The noise rattled around the snug workshop and panic filled his chest. Closing his eyes, he sucked in a breath and rested his shaking hands on the bench. The door clicked gently and swung open, revealing Pepper's smiling face.
"Okay?" she said carefully, running a hand down Tony's back. A sad smile, lacking in some of that twinkle, gave her all the answers she needed. He squeezed her hand.
"Thank you," she eyed the impossible mess spread around the room and sighed, disbelieving. He nodded, understanding. "I'm not asking you to…"
"Yeah, I know," he said, beginning to pack away the tools, "but, uh, maybe it's for the best if I, you know, dial it back a little." The shaking had started to subside, but he still clenched his fists tightly. Pepper, smiling, reached for his hands and took them in hers, swaying side to side in what might have been an amateur waltz if there had been any music playing. And they hadn't been surrounded by dismembered suits. She pecked his cheek gently.
"Any word from Thor?" She hadn't wanted to ask, but the tension on Tony's face was palpable.
"No. But no word from Reindeer Games, either, so," he shrugged and turned back to his work. Shaking her head, Pepper left the workshop and, stopping for a glass of wine from the fridge, stepped outside onto the balcony. The cool air had just begun to sweep over her face, soothing her soul, when a pocket of air popped loudly behind her. Whether it was fear or exasperation that motivated her to turn quickly and call her Krav Maga to mind, she would never be sure. Exasperation most certainly won out, however, when she locked eyes with Thor, tired and wild-haired, with his similarly bedraggled brother. Beside them, a woman who looked distinctly less baffled than she ought to, thanked myriad gods that she was back on Earth.
The sight of Loki once again in the tower filled her with dread. Before she could register that he wasn't, in fact, making any move to cause trouble, she strode to them and dealt him a heavy blow across the jaw, leaving without another look to fetch Tony from his workshop.
Jane let out a bark out laughter, burying her face in her hands. Thor, too, laughed but managed to restrain himself. Loki grumbled to himself.
With heavy eyes and sallow skin, Tony finally emerged from the workshop. There was very little that caused him anything other than resignation and emotional battering after everything, but two gods and a woman in his apartment seemed to do the trick. Heart pounding, he winced as the adrenalin flooded his body, screaming at him to run. His chest tightened.
Pulling in a breath, he stalked across the room and through a set of double doors, head down in weighty silence.
Ignoring the other two intruders, Jane grabbed Thor's arm and dragged him to the side.
"Why would you bring him back here? It took Tony months to get over- "Thor closed his eyes and held up his hands, nodding in agreement.
"Miss Potts, I know. Please, just let me explain the situation to him and he'll understand why we came." Relenting, she indicated a door behind them for Thor to follow Tony and told him to please call her Pepper. Suddenly desperate to retreat to her rooms, she ordered that Loki and Jane remain where they were.
"Do you know," Loki said as she turned to leave, "I do believe Jane would like to copy your example."
"Let her," Pepper snapped.
… … …
Tony leant over a desk, breaths heavy and eyes wide. Any delusions he had held about Thor's unshakeable sense of right disintegrated. Until, that is, Thor appeared in the doorway, reverting to his gentle expressions and brilliant smiles. The shaking subsided, but the reluctance to let Thor near remained.
"Stark, I just- "
"Stop," he said, quickly rounded the desk, "just stop."
Thor rubbed his face with his hands. "He can't stay on Asgard."
"Why does he have to be here?" Tony's voice was strained and hoarse.
"Inside the Tesseract- "interrupted with more protestations of stop, he changed tact. "What do you know of infinity stones?"
"Nothing. You've got to be making that up, surely."
"The infinity stones were formed at the very beginning of the universe – six of them. They are infinitely powerful. There was one inside the Tesseract," he paused as Tony cringed, "and Loki has found two more."
"But why bring him here?" straightening up, Tony grew visibly frustrated.
"He can't control them; took me long enough to get him to admit it. They call to each other as if they want to be together." The expression on Tony's face was one of slowly melting scepticism. Lips pursed, he nodded at Thor to continue.
"There's something else."
"Something bad and altogether world-ending, I assume?"
"Yes," Thor sighed deeply, visibly reluctant to keep going, "there may have been one inside the sceptre. He was given it by someone called Thanos. Apparently, his MO is 'bringing balance to the universe'. I dread to imagine what he means by that." He also dreaded to imagine that Loki might know what he meant by that but was electing to keep it quiet Pushing that thought away, he turned back to Tony.
"And this 'Thanos', he wants to find all the stones. For what?"
"We don't know."
"Forgive me for stating the obvious, but how do we know your brother isn't out to find them all?"
Without much of a thought for what he had been expecting, Thor knew he hadn't been expecting this much of a grilling. "I can't be certain," he confessed, "but I'm fairly sure he's a bit out of his depth here. He's the god of mischief, not universal death and destruction, after all." He laughed, but Tony's face sucked all humour from him.
"Okay. What's the plan, then?"
"I think our only hope is to find the ones that we do know about and hide them," Thor replied, wringing his hands. This much uncertainty was not something, in all his centuries, he had known, and it sat like a stone in his stomach. Tony nodded.
"Sure. I'm going to get a hold of S.H.I.E.L.D and find out where they've got that spectre," he set her shoulders back and left, leaving Thor with shaking breath and a lack of direction.
In the room where they had arrived, he returned to find Loki and Jane sat down, on opposite ends of a large leather couch, scowling periodically at one another. The exhaustion in his brain brought his thoughts to Loki and Sif as children, watching each other in the same way, and he let out a fond laugh. It was only met with stony glares in the present scenario.
He took Jane's hand, noticing at the same time that Loki bore two, near-identical red marks on his jawline. Handprints, he might so bold as to guess.
Tony returned in an unnervingly short amount of time, unable to stay still.
"I just got off the phone with S.H.I.E.L.D," Tony announced to the room, "they don't have it."
"How can they have lost a magic spectre?" Jane exclaimed, briefly wondering how her life had taken such a ridiculous turn. Thor and Tony locked eyes, but only managed a baffled shrug as an answer.
After three painful minutes of silence, Tony said what they had all be thinking.
"Don't tell Rogers I'm saying this, but it might be time to assemble the Avengers, so to speak."
Agreeing, Thor set about installing his brother on the top floor of the tower. Wisely, he made no move to remove the stones from him but cast an ancient ward around the room. He had just to hope it would hope temporarily.
Downstairs, the conversations with Clint and Banner went about the same, except Banner had needed a little more, let's say, persuasion, than had a professional marksman. Despite the exhaustion in every cell, Tony ploughed on, only to receive no answer from Natasha or Steve. He tried again, cursing their collective determination to live their own lives, and then tried twice more. By the sixth time, the dial tone caused a bone deep irritation, so he rose and shook out his aching legs.
Thoughts of sleep finally came to him. Pouring the rest of his drink down his throat, he rubbed his face and shut down the non-essential tech systems for the night. JARVIS' voice always calmed him, so he listened absent-mindedly as he jabbed at buttons.
As he climbed the stairs, his phone vibrated against his leg.
"Tony," Natasha huffed on the other end, "we'll call you back." The sound of gunfire echoed in the background. "We're kinda in the middle of something."