Hi there! It's been quite a while, hasn't it? So sorry about that, life has been absolutely hectic. On another note, did you notice we went over the 100k last time? Ain't that amazing? That's gotta be the slowest slow burn I've ever encountered XD (Sorry to all those who would like to see things move along).

Also, what did you think of Infinity War? I won't say what I thought about it, apart from the fact that I'm very happy that fanfiction exists because then all the characters we love can still be safe and sound ;) Let them do whatever they want in canon, I live for fanfiction anyway :p

Now, let's get on with the story. I hope you won't mind the magical (and other) mumbo jumbo too much XD

PREVIOUSLY ON ASAF:

"Right. Well, I'll try to make the scanning and stuff work on the sceptre now. Trying to discern two magical signatures coming from the same source, that's gonna be a challenge."

"I shall wish you good luck, then. You will need it," Loki said before walking back to his chair and his many books.

"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence!" Tony grumbled before starting up an incomprehensible conversation with J.A.R.V.I.S. about frequencies and energy emissions. Loki tuned him out.

CHAPTER 26

After his initial success with the Arc reactors, Tony had been hyped up and full of confidence – yes, you could as well say it; he'd gotten cocky and thought that scanning the damn sceptre's magic couldn't be that difficult. So of course, everything was difficult, and nothing was going the way he wanted.

He had worked all afternoon but he hadn't gotten better than the initial blur of lines that indicated the presence of magic, and that was totally useless. He couldn't distinguish the two different sources. So instead of bashing his head against the screen out of sheer frustration, he'd gotten up to stretch his legs and made himself a coffee. And he had done that again and again every ten minutes or so. Then he switched tactics and got up to jog – though the only reason he did that was to empty his bladder post-haste.

He could detect magic, but that was it. Sure, that was awesome and all, but it wasn't good enough. The frustration of his failures alone was giving him a headache, and he was ready to give up for now and call it a day. He could start again in the morning. Maybe he'd even dream of some new idea or something.

Tony walked over to his Arc reactors. They were still inside the scanners, and the scanners were still active, showing the pulsing magic that these energy sources created. He'd left it running for inspiration, to remind him of this milestone while he worked on the sceptre. But if he was going to stop working for today, he was going to have to put everything away. With so many people in his tower, and with some of the minor security features still not repaired after the battle, he definitely wasn't going to leave anything of importance out in the open.

His hand hovered over the off-switch of the scanners, but he hesitated. All right, so this was really dumb, but he was curious. Who could blame him? And anyway, genius scientists did it all the time. Heck, he'd done it more than once before. He could risk a finger or two. It hadn't looked like it harmed Loki, so maybe it wouldn't be harmful to humans either. Or he was going to give himself cancer or something. But hey, he was doing it to improve science. And to quench his curiosity. Mostly that.

Before he could reassess the risk like a sane person, Tony put his left hand in the closest scanner, next to the New Element reactor – he wasn't going to put his hand anywhere near his first Arc reactor now that he'd seen how… nasty and aggressive it seemed. He'd always been fond of his first Arc reactor, because it had been his first of course, and because it had saved his life more than once, and it was awesome because he'd built it in a cave. Now that he'd witnessed the magic that was inside it though, he felt kind of sick at the thought of that ever having been so close to his heart.

So instead, he chose to trust his newer Arc reactor, even though Loki hadn't put his hand near it so Tony had absolutely no proof that the reaction wouldn't be the same. Not that the reaction was what interested him per se. He just wanted to see if the scanner could detect any magic coming from him.

His hand felt warm, and not in a good way; the scanner wasn't generating heat, so he shouldn't be feeling like his hand had just bought itself a trip to the Sahara. AKA this was not a good idea. Still, he was already doing it, so he could at least leave his precious fingers in there long enough to try and see if anything magic related happened.

He peered at his hand, getting his face closer to try and glimpse at least a trace of anything like what he'd seen when Loki had interacted with it, but there were no tiny points of light hovering above his skin. Well, he was no wizard, so that was to be expected, but it was also a bit disappointing. Loki said he had magic, but maybe he didn't have enough for it to register here.

Tony inched his hand closer to the Arc reactor. It was kind of stupid, really, the amount of trepidation he felt now that he could see the magic; now that he had experienced for himself how alive magic could be, he felt like the Arc reactor was more than just an energy source. And one of them had proven to be kind of feral – towards Loki at least. He could understand the feeling, his soulmate could be rather irritating sometimes, but still.

His fingers got closer and closer to the wriggling sphere of lines, but nothing happened. His fingers passed through, and nothing happened. Tony was going to pretend that he wasn't disappointed. Nope, not disappointed at all.

He went to grab the Arc reactor to take it out of the scanner and be done with it, and the instant his skin touched the glowing blue surface, it happened. The lines of the sphere erupted outward where his hand had punched through it, neatly encircling his wrist like a bracelet in an excited fistfight of thin lines, and dots like panicked ants danced over the skin and up his arm until the point where the scanner ended.

Magic. This Arc reactor was giving him its magic! How awesome was that! "Good boy!" Tony whispered, though even that wasn't silent enough – he could feel a bubble of amusement ripple through the bond. Tony looked up and met Loki's amused gaze. For a fraction of a second he hesitated between frowning at his soulmate and ignoring him, but if you were caught doing something silly, you could as well do what you really wanted to.

Tony stuck his tongue out in a nice representation of his ever-present inner child, and his jaw nearly smacked against his knees when Loki – millennia old alien and all – did the exact same thing back, then smirked. Tony's stomach did a strange little double salto – the shock, no doubt – and he stared at the kind of regal and kind of stuck-up looking Jötunn who was giving him a mischievous grin with a hint of pointy-ish teeth.

Somehow, it made sense. A little bit. Lady Fate wasn't completely full of shit after all. Maybe, somehow, they were kind of compatible. Maybe they were kind of made for each other, however that worked. In a potential 'best friends' kind of way, of course. It seemed crazy. But somehow, Tony kind of liked the idea of having someone who got him, and someone who could be just as childish, and just as crazy as him, and just as intelligent as him, with him until he died. After he died, even. That was kind of… Wow. Yeah, there was no other word for it. Also, on another note, the colour of Loki's tongue was fascinating – he wouldn't mind seeing more of it. For a totally, completely, utterly scientific reason of course.

Tony forced his eyes to look back at his hand, and he detached the Arc reactor from the scanner and deactivated both of them. He took a deep, stealing breath and took hold of his first Arc reactor, but of course nothing happened. He'd never felt any energy coming from it apart from its characteristic hum, and nothing was different now. If the magic was in any way nasty, he couldn't feel it. Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday he would be able to.

Tony walked towards his safe, said the password and let J.A.R.V.I.S. scan him. The door opened smoothly and he entered, making a bee-line for the compartment where he stored all his Arc reactors. It clicked open at his command, and locked itself after he closed it again. Ah, the wonders of technology. That at least he understood perfectly. If only magic could be as easy as programming was.

Wait. Programming. What if he tried to look for something like a program? Not that that made much sense, but… Perhaps a spell could be considered coding, in a way. Loki had called it weaving and patterns and all that, but maybe… Tony rushed back to his desk in a half-jog, and he could feel Loki's raised eyebrow all the way back to his seat.

"A new idea?" Loki asked. That obviously didn't require a response; Tony's reaction was quite clear, wasn't it? He pulled up the sceptre's scan again and started typing strings of code, mind bursting with sudden inspiration. He shut out the fluttering feelings coming through the bond – amusement, curiosity, and something like fondness – and listened to the little explosions of insight that came to him in a rush.

XXXxxxXXXxxxXXXxxxXXXxxxXXX

Loki's stomach grumbled silently, and he admonished it just as silently. He was not about to interrupt Tony who seemed to be in the middle of an epiphany of sorts to ask him about going up to dinner – he reckoned it should be about time soon. Not that he was in any way eager to join the rest of the Avengers, but he would suffer through it if it meant food. However, he would not go up there alone, without Tony to serve as a buffer, so he would just have to wait for now. At least until he found out where this new bout of research was heading – progress or failure – by reading his soulmate's muddled feelings.

Loki went back to the book he was reading, some sort of introduction to Midgard's take on astronomy, and tried to concentrate on the text. It was not that the subject was not interesting – it was in fact fascinating, learning about the primitive way Midgard thought about the universe, and seeing the progress they had made on the subject in such a short amount of time.

It was just that he had been reading all day, and he longed to do something else, though he did not know what. He could explore the tower, or the sections J.A.R.V.I.S. gave him access to at least, but that meant potentially encountering the Avengers. He could explore Tony's workshop in more detail, but as most of it was either empty or piled with scraps and technology unknown to Loki, he did not see how he could be entertained for long. And he had only access to one half of the workshop anyway; he refused to get any closer to the sceptre right now. And no, that did not make him a coward in any way.

Loki's wandering gaze found Tony's 'tablet' device, not unlike his electronic reader but bigger, with the surface of the switched-off screen reflecting the overhead lights. He glanced at Tony, still fully immersed in his work, and stood up to retrieve it. The screen flared to life when he held it up the way he had seen Midgardians do, and Loki looked at the multi-coloured mess that confronted him. In front of a picture of Iron Man in flight were little square images of varying colours, with titles of what they probably represented underneath, but most of them made no sense whatsoever.

If there was any logic to this – which, given that is was made by Midgardians, was definitely not guaranteed – these images were buttons to access different functions of the device. Perhaps one of them led to the message Tony had received earlier, or perhaps one led to the information platform of the 'internet' he had heard much about, but none of the titles he saw seemed to lead there.

One of the titles caught his eye, and he hesitatingly touched the image above it. Surely there was no way to break the device by using its innate features. Some images flashed on the screen, a white one with red swirls and the word 'Rovio', and strange colourful creatures that surely could not exist on this Realm or beyond. Another image appeared, with more creatures, what possibly represented eggs, and the word 'play'. Loki stared at the screen, eyebrows twitching, while an annoying sound – he certainly could not call this music – came from the device. What was the purpose of this… function? This 'play', this strange sound and colourful art might suggest a game for children. Why would Tony ever have such a thing on his—

"J.A.R.V.', be a dear and whip up a Black Sabbath playlist," Tony mumbled, still peering at his screen.

The loud noise that invaded the workshop made Loki jump and almost break the delicate tablet in his hands. He remained frozen in place for a moment, letting this new… information wash over him – and probably drill holes in his eardrums.

Tony's eyes were suddenly on him. "J.A.R.V.', tone down the music," his soulmate said – or mouthed, Loki could not hear him over the ruckus. The volume diminished to a more palatable level. "Er, sorry. I should have warned. And remembered the super hearing and stuff."

Ah. Indeed, Loki's shielding of the bond had almost disappeared in his surprise. And he had somehow communicated, if not a thought, at least an impression well enough for Tony to notice it at the height of his concentration. This level of connectedness was getting alarmingly close to actual wordless communication – and one that did not need the slow and uncomfortable Morse Code. That was definitely not something Loki could appreciate at this stage of their rather too distant relationship.

"D'you need me to get rid of the music entirely, or…"

Tony wanted this strange Midgardian music, obviously. He might even… Loki concentrated on the bond. Loki got the impression that Tony might even need this music to help him focus. Loki cocked his head. This growth of the bond might not be entirely useless after all; if he was the one getting information from Tony, of course.

"You may keep it," he answered. At this volume it was not harming him, and he would be able to ignore it easily enough. He had managed to ignore things much louder and much inaner – Thor – for centuries.

"Awesome! Merci, chéri!" And with that peculiar moniker – then again, this seemed normal coming from Tony Stark – his soulmate went back to his work.

Loki looked back down at the tablet. The strange, childish game-looking feature was still displayed. And no, it was not surprising at all to find this on Tony's device, now that he thought about it. Loki touched the word 'play', and the screen went to several options, all numbered, and most of them half-hidden behind something Loki believed was called a 'padlock'. All but one was locked; '1. Poached Eggs'. Then, again, locks and a number '1'. Loki sighed. This was getting tedious.

A new image appeared, displaying the colourful creatures, an empty nest, and green beasts with eggs and a Midgardian pan; possibly a crude way to tell the story of what happened to the colourful creatures – if these were birds, like the title of this feature suggested, then Loki wondered where on Midgard these poor things may be, that he could put them out of their misery. One thing was clear, however: these 'birds' had every reason to be 'angry'.

A new image, and Loki frowned. He waited, and as nothing happened, he touched the screen. The incomprehensible image disappeared, showing him some kind of possible representation of ground, grass and sky, with the red 'birds' on the left, the green beast on the right. The device's music was just as grating as Tony's, and Loki tried to tune it out. The red 'birds' hopped up and down. The green beast blinked. Nothing happened.

"Mr Friggason." J.A.R.V.I.S.' voice came out of the tablet itself. "If you would allow me to explain?"

It was not as if Loki had anything better to do at the moment, so he acquiesced. Apparently, the green beasts were pigs and they had to be killed being hit hard enough by either the constructions they lived in, or the Angry Birds that had to be flung at them. One simply had to choose the right angle to 'throw' the bird at, and the right timing to release the special attributes of the non-red ones. Loki sped through the game with ease, and after a while he was introduced to other simple games such as Fruit Ninja or Cut the Rope or Criminal Case – Midgardians were certainly inspired when it came to finding ways to waste the little time they had.

"You're pretty good at this for an old guy," Tony suddenly said from beside him, and Loki did his best not to show his surprise. This last game – Angry Birds Space – was more engrossing than he would have thought. He had not even noticed that Tony's music had stopped, or that his soulmate had moved at all. Midgardian entertainment was deviously treacherous in its distraction.

Tony's grin was very wide and restless energy was crackling all over the bond. "I think I've got it, by the way. The difference between Thanos' spell and the sceptre's own magic. Wanna take a look?"

Loki put the device down and stood up, more by reflex than by true agreement, and when Tony started walking towards the weapon, he did not follow. He could not follow. Dread filled him at the mere idea of getting close enough to the Mad Titan's foul magic to be able to analyse it. It was pathetic. Tony would be there – their soul bond should protect them from the sceptre's ill intent. And yet he still could not make himself move. He was the most pathetic being in all the Nine Realms.

"Hey." Tony's hand landed on Loki's upper arm, and their connection was immediate and as breath-taking as always. Through it his awareness of Tony's trepidation and excitement increased tenfold, and a feeling of recklessness – something akin to 'let's confront the enemy and deal with whatever shit they throw at us' – seeped into him from his soulmate's mind. Tony grabbed his hand and tugged. Loki looked at their touching skins, the deep blue and the soft beige, so unrelated in colour and yet so complementary in size, and let himself step forward. His eyes did not leave their clasped fingers until Tony stopped and they were there.

Loki could feel Thanos' magic react to his presence even before he looked up, trying to call to his bruised and depleted core, whispering sweet promises of power. The display that surrounded the sceptre reacted accordingly, swarming more of its lights in his direction, just like the taint Loki knew was turned towards him, like a predator ready to pounce. Tony squeezed his palm in response.

"Behold: two different magical signatures coming from the same artefact. When I looked at them as different energy sources I couldn't distinguish them because I don't have the tech, and as you can see they are embedded in each other – or rather, the blue one is embedded in the yellow one – so that didn't get me anywhere, but when I looked at it as code – like, you know, woven spells or whatnot – I found these two different signatures. The central one looks a bit like an OS which would make the blue one some nasty-looking program, and complex as fuck, but…"

Loki stopped listening when it seemed like Tony was not going to stop – and the Midgardian terminology did not interest him at the moment. This display was very peculiar and did not resemble even remotely any kind of spell structure he knew, and yet in some way it still made sense, somewhat. And that central structure made of golden yellow light… Loki had always had an inkling that the sceptre could be more powerful than he had been led to believe, and he knew Thanos' magic was built upon an artefact that fuelled it, but this… Merely looking at the breathing lights gave him the impression he could almost feel the true nature of the magic hidden in the sceptre's core, and it was brighter than anything he'd ever felt.

"Crazy, right? It almost looks… alive. I mean, yeah, sure, it's magic, it feels alive, yada, yada, but this looks like some next level shit. Not that I know what spells usually look like, but. If I were to compare this to any type of programming I know, I'd say this is A.I.-level coding. Especially the yellow bit, that thing looks otherworldly. I mean, it is, literally, but it's also fucking awesome. The blue though… I mean, for human standards it's amazing, but in comparison to the yellow centre… It's like surrounding a diamond in glass, seems a bit like a waste."

Loki hummed in answer. A diamond in glass. The waste of a beautiful gem, unless one did not want said gem to sparkle and shine in any light, but only with the light one allowed it access to – by controlling the opacity of the glass. Thanos' taint had a double purpose – to control the amount of contact the user had with the central core, and to control the amount of contact the central core had with the user.

"So, if the centre of this thing has a specific purpose – a will, if we consider it kind of alive – and the spell is controlling its range of action, then I guess we can consider the spell like a virus." Either Tony had come to the same conclusions as Loki, or he had gleaned the information through the bond. Their connection seemed to shine brighter in front of the darkness emanating from the sceptre. "And the infection that cripples the body has its own agenda, like spreading and shit. That's what it did, right? It 'spread' onto you and then you helped it get to Clint and it controlled you all. But you not as much as it did Clint, maybe because you were the primary host, or because you've got a fancy magical mind or something."

"Perhaps."

"Right. We've got to beat the virus then."

"It would seem so." If they wanted to relieve the sceptre of its taint. And if it was even within their power to do so. Loki certainly wasn't eager to try.

"We gotta try something at least. Well, I say we, but I'm not sure I can help. I don't know the coding language, so I can't hack into it. You're the one with the knowledge. And sure, you've got a low battery and all, but with me as a charger, I'm sure well manage to at least cripple it, right?"

Tony was grinning at him, Loki could see it from the corner of his eye, but his own gaze remained trained on the spherical display. While this representation of magic did give him some new insights, it did not procure a true understanding of the type of magic the taint's spell was made of, or how to counteract it. Yet, insane as it may be, he wanted to at least try. Tony's enthusiasm was infectious.

"You have an idea, don't you?"

"Not necessarily. I'm not certain how to proceed exactly, however—" Loki stretched his free hand forward, inching it towards the gleaming blue display. When the taint's magic lashed out with its malevolent tentacles, the display whipped forward as well, trying to grasp his limb with little glowing cubes.

"That's quite the aggressive magic Lego we've got here!"

Loki withdrew his hand. While the appearance of the spell differed in his mind's eye and in the air before him, there were some similarities he understood. And the one thing he could see on the display, but not with his magical awareness, were the connections the spell had to the sceptre's core – the taint he could feel bubble and undulate around the core was so thick that he had never laid eyes (or his senses) on the core itself.

"This might be a ridiculous idea, but what if we cut the spell at its roots? Cut out the rootkit? I mean, there are those links there, those tendrils that connect it to the yellow core, yeah? If we cut it loose, can it, you know, die? Like cutting the connection to the server? Pulling the plug?"

"That is not how spells work."

"Okay. Guess that's just how it looks like to me."

And even though it went against everything Loki knew, it did seem like that to him too, now that he saw the magic represented in this unnatural way. Was this representation wrong? Or was Loki's perception of spells – as well as Asgard's, the Nine Realms', and all the places beyond he had seen – wrong? Or did it only concern the type of magic Thanos had used? Either way, it was worth a try. If only he knew how.

"I would like to see my own magic revealed in your constructions of light." Perhaps that would help him somehow understand this all better.

Astonishment crossed Tony's features. "You want to scan yourself? Don't mind if I record that," he grinned. "I can set up the other scanner in the same way I did this one and we'll see what happens I guess."

Tony's hand untangled from Loki's before he realised his soulmate's intentions, and the reaction was immediate. Blue light erupted from the display like the gaping maw of a surging beast and charged in Loki's direction; a cornered animal's vicious retaliation. While the light stopped at the display's limits, hitting an invisible wall, the taint's magic continued its advance in ever thinning tendrils, trying to reach Loki's skin and pierce him straight through the heart.

It all happened so fast – Loki stood frozen in place, eyes wide and breath caught, unable to make himself move. It was ridiculous. He should have had sufficient time to step away; everything was moving so very slowly. And he himself was slowest of all.

Thanos' magic was only a dozen hairs thick and half a breath away from his chest. The Mad Titan was going to fight for his mind again, and he had none of his magical reserve to fight such an assault. This was it. This was the end.

Ooooh look at that, a cliff-hanger! No worries, this is not the end ;) And I swear I didn't intend to leave you with a cliff-hanger at all, but then the Mad Titan's magic got a hold of me and this happened. I didn't want to bring Avengers 3 into this, but my suffering because of it might have high-jacked my subconscious and made me lash out at the very last moment. No worries though, I'll fix it. I guess. Somehow… :p

Spread the Luv!

LL