Sorry, I'm a bit late again – but it's still Sunday in my time zone :p Hope you like this chapter :)
Important: NO UPDATE NEXT WEEKEND! I'll be moving to another country! (OMG I'm moving next week! *runs around, screaming inside*). So, I won't have time to write – okay, maybe a tiny bit on the plane – and I won't be able to update. I might not even be able to update the weekend after that, because I might not have any internet access, so… Sorry if you're disappointed – of course you are, I'd be too ;) – but that's life!
PREVIOUSLY ON ASAF: As they advanced, Tony shifted his palm's position, pushing his fingers between Loki's and interlacing them, squeezing, as if wanting to mould their hands together so that their connection would never break. Loki held on tightly in reflex – or rather, as tightly as mortal hands could bear – and he felt some tenseness leave his body. He could get used to this; more physical contact with someone. And of course, they had to touch at night, so he would indeed be touching Tony more often than he had ever touched anyone else, except perhaps his mother. However, he should not get used to this: Tony holding onto him tightly in broad daylight, both reaping comfort from the gesture. It was only due to this unfortunate situation after all.
CHAPTER 20
Loki stopped and turned towards the rubble pile they had been walking around. It was just over fifteen feet tall here, gradually descending in height until only a few cement boulders and some twisted metal met his shoes in the heavy grey dust. A whole group of people had assembled behind him, chattering nonsense into their phones, holding up strange equipment or, like Coulson, waiting patiently in silence. Loki closed his eyes for a second, concentrating again.
He pointed in the exact direction of the 'light'. "I would say… Tony, can you remind be of the exact measurement of a 'foot'?" His soulmate looked startled for a fraction of a second, before he became serious once more and held up their joined hands. Instead of letting go, he simply straightened his fingers, and placed his other, gauntlet-covered hand at a specific distance – perhaps guided by the very knowledgeable J.A.R.V.I.S.. Loki memorised the measurement; in his previous visualisation of a 'foot' from the 'inch' J.A.R.V.I.S. had shown him, he had indeed not been precise enough.
He closed his eyes, put his finger once again in the exact direction of the presence, and visualised the distance. "I would say, about 76.7 feet from here."
"Would that be from your finger on, Sir?" some unknown voice said from his right, and Loki opened his eyes to glance at the white-clad woman scribbling on a wrinkled piece of paper.
"From my heart to their heart."
Some commotion ensued, and soon a small technological device was held in front of his face by the eager-looking white-clad woman. "Can you place this laser against your heart – well, against your chest above your heart, of course – and point in the right direction?" Loki looked at the thing for an instant before gingerly taking it between two fingers. He turned it this way and that, observing the small cylindrical device. There was a button on the side of it, and he pressed it. Red light shot forth, a thin beam that went straight up towards the sky.
Next to him, Tony sighed. "Hey lady, are you really asking him to do this with a red laser on a clear sunny day?"
"It's doctor, not 'lady', Mr Stark," the woman answered.
"Jemma!" another mortal protested – a dishevelled-looking man all clad in white too (most of the Midgardians standing there were).
Loki listened distractedly to the meaningless conversation while moving the 'laser' this way and that, writing ephemeral words on the building still standing opposite them – it would be too far for the mortals to see, but Loki could distinguish the runes just fine.
"Well, Miss, then I'm 'doctor' to you too. And that doesn't answer my question."
"Mister Stark, it is the only laser that seems to be on hand. And I just thought that, Mister Loki being Asgardian and all, he might be able to point it in the right direction regardless. Don't Asgardians claim to be gods?"
"We only called ourselves 'gods' because others, such as you mortals, worshipped us as such. I believe it went to our ancestor's heads." Tony snorted, and Loki smirked. Indeed, he may as well be truthful with himself; he was considering himself – possibly wrongly, when people like his soulmate were concerned – vastly superior to all the assembled. "Either way, if it is this straight line of red light that you call 'laser', then I can indeed see it."
"You can?" Tony asked, his voice full of doubt but the bond full of awe.
"Am I to assume that none of you can?"
"Nope. We can't see this wavelength with the naked eye with so much ambient light and no scattering particles."
"Hmm. Then what use could me pointing at the mortal survivor be if you cannot see it?"
"Because we have machines that can," the woman interjected.
"Very well." Loki placed the device over his heart, concentrated again on the 'light' he could feel, and let the 'laser' form a straight line between them.
"Fitz, can you place your little drone pet where he's pointing?" the woman exclaimed excitedly, scribbling some more on her paper.
"Grumpy is not a pet, Jemma! Stop calling him that!" the dishevelled man grumbled as he fished a small machine out of a suitcase. He fiddled with it, and it flew a few feet up and stopped, hovering. The man then moved his finger on something that looked like a small 'tablet' device, and the flying 'Grumpy' went directly towards where the laser was pointing.
"You sure you know where your heart is?" May asked all of a sudden, eyeing Loki's hand where it was placed an inch or two below his clavicles.
"Ah, yes. I should have been more precise. The distance is from my magical core to their magical core. My magical core is placed in the same position as my heart would be in my… true skin."
"I really need to perform a few scans soon," Tony muttered in a voice so low that Loki doubted anyone else had heard.
"58.6," the dishevelled man – the so-called 'Fitz' – announced. "So the survivor must be at about 18.1 feet inwards, at a 29.9 degree upwards angle. I'll send the other dwarfs to scan the area and look for the best point of entry. It's a matter of access and structural integrity, so if we…"
Loki stopped listening then, while Fitz rattled on about the procedure at a decreasing volume, speaking to himself, and the Jemma woman jabbered about the machines they would need. Coulson put them in charge of the situation – that, at least, made the woman falter while she protested about the responsibility, flustered – and Loki deliberately stepped away after having handed the laser to the closest S.H.I.E.L.D. person. With Tony still holding onto him tightly, he made his way through the throng, closely followed by a frowning Agent May.
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Tony trailed slightly behind his soulmate, holding tightly onto that warming hand, gut clenching painfully at the thought of all the lives that were lost. If only he had been able to help more. Thor and Hulk had managed to down one of the Leviathans, and the other two had fallen from the sky when the mothership was destroyed, but… He should have been able to do something, to do more! What, he didn't know, but something!
While he had been dealing with Loki who had just been wrenched away from the clutches of Thanos' control, and then with flying a nuke into outer space, he hadn't been defending the defenceless New Yorkers, and this was the result. Numerous destroyed or partially destroyed buildings, victims – dead or alive – buried underneath… How many could he have saved if he had done something more? How many had died, not of the collapse itself, but of their wounds; the head injuries, the blood loss, the lack of air? Why hadn't they helped yesterday, when many more could have been saved?
Loki came to a stop, observing the almost forty feet high pile, and closed his eyes, forehead creased in concentration. May stopped next to Tony, seeming infuriatingly calm, making Tony's anger skyrocket. "Remind me why the hell you people are studying the alien tech instead of looking for survivors?"
"I've been told the debris has been scanned for life signs, but thermographic cameras, and whatever other gadgets they use, can only see so far. If there are people buried too deep, no way we can see them. And the quicker we get these alien ships out of here, the quicker this place can be opened to the civilian instances who can start digging. We don't have the resources to go through all that rubble. But if you can pinpoint people's location… That's another story I guess."
"Nice excuses you've got there. How many more people do you think we could have found if we'd been here yesterday morning?" Tony growled.
"Under normal circumstances, how much would that have helped? We didn't know he could do that…" she said, pointing at Loki. She sighed. "You can blame shitty bureaucracy. The higher-up always fear more for their reputation than that they care for the greater good. And that's true whatever the organisation. They probably think that letting the Avengers do all the heavy lifting is bad for their image or something." She paused. "And anyway, nothing stopped you from flying out here yesterday to try to help on your own."
"Well I thought your priority would be saving people, not tech! So fuck you!"
"You're the one who made the aliens fall from the sky, destroying buildings like this one, so fuck you too!"
"Children!" Coulson chided. He had come up behind them silently enough for May and him not to notice and both flinched back at the reprimand. "Now is not the time to pick a fight. I thought we had survivors to find."
Tony huffed through his nose. No need to remind him. He turned towards Loki, squeezing his hand once to be sure he listened. Eyelids opened, even though the green irises remained unfocused, as if he was concentrated on something else. "Where are they?"
"They seem rather deep. Approximatively 162 feet from here."
"Right. Well, I guess we'll start by going above and scan the whole pile. Do you need to touch my hand or will any skin do?"
"The flow will not have the same strength depending on where the connexion is made." Loki looked at him then. "Why? What did you have in mind?"
"We're gonna fly. I'll need my hands for stability, but the helmet is not mandatory, J.A.R.V.I.S. can give the information from the scans verbally."
Loki's eyes lowered, locking on the section of throat that was visible, and Tony swallowed. Last time he'd had that hand there, he was half-suspended in the air and half-choking. It was different now, though. Now, he knew that even if that hand, probably strong enough to snap his neck in two, wrapped itself around his throat, nothing harmful would happen. Loki didn't look in a suicidal mood after all – and anyway, even if Loki became suddenly crazy and tried something, Tony could throw a repulsor blast in his face. That would be enough to dislodge him. Probably. Maybe. Whatever, that wasn't going to happen; they were soulmates. That was reason enough.
"Okay, so, er… You can touch my face or whatever with one hand, hold onto me with the other, and place your feet on my boots maybe. I should be able to get us up there without crashing."
"How reassuring." Loki stepped in front of him, closer, too close, and gently put a hand on the side of Tony's neck, wedging it halfway inside the suit, and the thumb touched the back of his ear. The touch felt awfully intimate, and when Loki plastered himself against his suit, he kind of felt like calling the whole thing off. He cleared his throat, trying to dispel the discomfort, and he heard Loki chuckle; of course the bastard would find this situation funny.
With his hands now both free, and both gloved again, Tony activated the replusors on two percent, gently lifting them off the ground. They hovered for an instant, and the arm Loki had wrapped around Tony's body – under his arm instead of over it, which wasn't really practical given the height difference – shifted slightly. "Hold on," he warned before upping the power, and they went higher. He oriented their flightpath forward, getting them closer to the rubble. They neared the top of the pile when Loki finally decided to give directions.
"Slightly to the left," he said, eyes closed again. Tony surmised his soulmate was clever enough to be talking about Tony's left instead of his, so he moved to the left. No contradictory order came, which meant he had been right. With no other instructions forthcoming, he continued advancing slowly, beyond the ridge that had been visible from the ground, going downwards a little bit again.
"Stop!" Loki said. Tony hovered in place. "Back a little bit. Stop. To the right. There! About 40.3 feet down."
Tony gently let them touch the rubble, a mixture of jagged concrete slabs and rocks, pieces of metal, the odd shard of wood or glass, and everything covered in heavy dust. "And now?"
"34.1 feet."
"Okay, you stay here. I'll let J.A.R.V.I.S. scan everything." Loki let go of him, and Tony made his helmet slide up again, faceplate clicking into place with a metallic twang. He took off, spiralling around the designated location in a widening circle, while his A.I. did all the real work.
"Scans complete, Sir," the posh British accent breathed in his ear. "The structural integrity of the scannable areas suggests that everything above Mr Friggason's level can be blasted away, after which digging can commence in a thirty feet radius until I can scan the area more deeply."
Tony flew over the eight feet ridge he needed to remove, and back down towards Coulson; him and May were not alone anymore, and an aggregation of S.H.I.E.L.D. members of all sorts were loudly discussing things among themselves. Tony upped his speakers before saying: "I'm gonna need you all to step way back, 'cause rubble's might come flying your way in the next few minutes. I wouldn't suggest loitering here."
Tony flew back up while Coulson ordered his people away. Loki had remained in the same spot, arms crossed, bond twitching in impatience. Tony ignored him and positioned himself at the best angle, before shooting repeatedly at the rubble with his repulsors; the charging whine of energy, the exploding hiss of its release, concrete clumps tumbling down the slope, and repeat. It took a few minutes to clear the area, and when he had finished, Tony returned to Loki through the misty haze of dust he'd created.
"You gonna be okay, breathing-wise? I'm sure I can find you a dust mask or something."
"I am fine like this," Loki said with a gaze that probably meant 'let's get on with it'.
"Suit yourself. You gonna do this bare-handed, or do you want gloves?"
"Why would I need gloves?" Loki sounded more and more exasperated.
"Because we humans would cut ourselves if we did this without them, and I don't know how strong your skin is, comparatively. I'd really like to run some tests later to find out, if you don't mind. So meanwhile, I'm applying human standards to you, unless proven otherwise."
Loki picked up a big slab of concrete as if it barely weighed anything – the bulging muscles that made the sleeves of his tee ride up slightly sure were impressive-looking – and threw it a fair distance away, making it roll down the slope. If such a thing was awesome when done by Thor, who looked like a cliché blond surfer on steroids, it was even more awesome when done by Loki, who, in comparison, looked like a beautifully built – but skinny – fashion model.
"Consider yourself 'proven otherwise'."
"Great! I still want to run tests, though." Tony's grin was huge behind the protection of his faceplate.
"Why am I not surprised," Loki said in a breath that Tony wouldn't have heard if the mics on his suit weren't way better than his own, human hearing.
They worked in silence, following J.A.R.V.I.S.'s directions, carefully dislodging stuck pieces and digging a wide crater in the debris pile. It wasn't as if they didn't have things they could talk about while they worked – Tony never lacked conversation subjects, even though his choice of subject often ended up being very one-sided – they simply did not need to talk. Whenever a piece of rubble was too heavy, or awfully stuck, the other came to help without a word, and they just kept on working.
It was boring, yes, and Tony wouldn't have minded talking even if all this moving had him kind of out of breath, but this silence was nice too. Usually, Tony hated silence, but this one was fine. It was probably one of those silences that people called 'companionable'. Tony certainly wasn't used to that. It didn't mean, of course, that the rest of the world was silent; machines were whirring, excavator buckets were making the concrete hiss and scream while it was scraped away, and people were yelling orders at each other in an indistinguishable garble of words. Around the Leviathan, blasts were going off and smoke was visible through the heavy dust that permeated the air.
They paused from time to time, for Tony to calm his aching lungs, and for Loki to discreetly cough – no need for a mask, huh? Tony would take off his glove then, so that Loki could touch him with his filthy and chafed hand to verify the location of their targets. It was during one of these breaks that the excavation machines in the distance fell silent, and not soon after, whoops and applause echoed between the mounds of debris.
"Looks like they found the lone survivor over there. Let's find ours." They continued digging while the sun started lowering westward after noon. Less than ten feet remained and they had slowed to a careful pace, wary of shifting rocks and only pulling out those J.A.R.V.I.S. designated, like a deadly game of Jenga. The A.I.'s scans could see them now, the three people still alive but unmoving, most likely a man and two women, probably unconscious.
Suddenly Loki hissed and jerked his hand back, a welt of red blooming on his palm. He swiped the blood away on the somewhat cleaner inside of his shirt and closed his eyes. While Tony looked on, the wound scabbed over even though it didn't completely heal – the lack of magic was probably why. Tony hadn't seen many scars on Loki's body before, which probably meant that in normal circumstances his healing capacity could make all traces disappear.
"I was wondering… Your Jötunn skin, is it tougher than this one?"
Loki took his sweet time before answering, which was an answer already. "Why would you think that?"
"It feels… stronger. Like, leatherier. It's only a hypothesis, of course. I'd need to run some tests."
Loki sighed. "Of course, you would. Well, it isn't stronger per say…"
"Uhuh. And why does my little bond tell me that's not entirely true?"
"It's… stronger against perforation. It is not against burns, for instance."
"Right, and you're risking a lot of burns while digging, I get it."
"I am not shapeshifting again today! My Æsir form is the one I know best! And we're almost there anyhow."
As if those words had been a signal of the gods – real gods, not aliens – a small and precarious hole formed when Loki took out the next rock, connecting the cavity below with the open air. No one could be seen yet through the opening, but at least air would flow through. They worked very carefully until a hole wide enough to let one of them through was made.
On one side of the crater, Coulson and May – which J.A.R.V.I.S. had notified the moment they broke through – stood, accompanied by medic-looking people holding stretchers. Tony was lowered down into the low-ceiling cavity by Loki – he couldn't risk jumping or using his repulsors.
"J.A.R.V.', scan them and tell me if they can be moved without further injury."
Apart from a nasty compound fracture in the man's arm – someone had used a piece of cloth to stop the blood flow – and some less important broken or cracked bones, the three survivors seemed moveable enough. Tony wormed his way towards the closest in a mix of crawling and crouching – the suit really wasn't meant for this – and he gingerly picked up the woman and moved even slower backwards. Loki was outside the hole and helped him get her out. The medics had gotten closer, and Loki lowered the woman onto a portable stretcher before coming back.
"Okay, help me out of this hole, you're going down here. I can't move correctly with the suit, it's too cramped."
They exchanged places, and Tony was the one bringing the other woman and the man to the medics next. When everyone scrambled off the rubble pile, there was a mandatory round of applause from the assembly down below, while two military ambulances were loaded up and rushed off. Both Tony and Loki were congratulated on a job well done, receiving a number of pats on the back that Tony didn't mind – he was still wearing the Mark V – but that had Loki growing increasingly irritated, so much so that Tony was afraid he might lash out. He threw an arm over his soulmate's shoulder – the added height of the suit didn't make the position too awkward – and he looked meaningfully at Coulson.
"All right, people! Back to work!" the Deputy Director said after clapping in his hands to make them listen. The group slowly dispersed, not without a longing glance at Loki from the 'Jemma and Fitz' duo of scientists – thinking of all the experiments they'd like to do on 'the alien', no doubt.
"So, Phil. Where to next? I'm sure there are more collapsed buildings you haven't checked."
"We'll go to the other Leviathan sites first, then the rest."
Tony made the suit retract and picked up the suitcase with a shaky arm. God, he was hot and sweaty and tired, and they had barely started! Loki on the other hand looked fit as a fiddle – well, if it weren't for the scrapes and dust that covered him from head to toe. It made his skin dry and wrinkly around the eyes, and his hair was all greyish.
Tony smirked. "You're finally looking your real age, darling."
Loki passed a hand over his hair, trying to shake cement dust out of his braid. "And you don't need any filth to look yours, dear."
"Ouch! But you're right. I'm a poor old mortal and this suitcase is soooo heavy. Care to help a guy out?"
Loki rolled his eyes but took the Mark V anyway. Someone thrust bottles of water in their hands, and they were off to the car, ready to start the whole locate-and-dig-and-save-people job all over again. It was going to be a long yet fulfilling day.
Sure, all the dead people crushed by buildings ain't fun, but we saved a few! I call that a success XD And I couldn't stop myself from adding a few more Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. characters, just for a chapter - if you haven't seen it, it's not important ;)
See you in one or two weeks, we'll see :)
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