Well. Hello. Here I am again. Writing this chapter wasn't a walk in the park *wink, wink* but I got it done. Going back in time a bit to get some of Loki's POV from during the last scene because that was brutal XD I hadn't expected that to happen – Tony did that all on his own – so now I had to deal with it -_-' Anyway, hope you like it :)

PREVIOUSLY ON ASAF: How? How had he not noticed? And how long had Loki been there? How much had he heard? The silence in the back of Tony's mind resonated with pain – but this time the pain was all Tony's. The shielding had never been as strong as it was right at this moment, and for the first time since the soul bond, Tony felt utterly, excruciatingly alone.

"Ah," said Rhodey.

Yeah. Ah. Understatement of the century. Why did Tony always manage to fuck everything up?

CHAPTER 33

Loki had felt Tony come up from his workshop to the kitchen. No matter how hard he'd tried losing himself in the book he was reading – music had not been enough of a distraction now that the pieces in the music book weren't much of a challenge – it hadn't stopped him from following Tony's whereabouts and whirlwind of transferred emotions.

Then J.A.R.V.I.S. had interrupted him with the good news of the imminent success of his prank, and replaced the page of his book with the plunging view of the kitchen. Rhodey had a mug full of a foamy beverage, and he was cascading a liberate amount of salt from the sugar shaker into it. When Rhodey sprayed the beverage all over the table, Loki clamped down on the bond and tried to keep his mirth concealed, but the shock and disbelief on Tony's face… A chuckle escaped him, and then full out laughter; it echoed in the empty library room and sounded oh-so-foreign. Norns, it felt like he hadn't laughed in so long.

The fact that Tony, upon realising that Loki was involved in the situation – how could he not when Loki had let his control over the shield almost slip entirely – Tony had sided with Loki instead of his best friend. Certainly, it was just a harmless prank, nothing truly meaningful, but his heart would not listen to reason. Tony had sided with him, despite their current differences. Tony had managed to make Rhodey drink of the foul beverage again, and he had even managed to phrase his question such that even J.A.R.V.I.S. could participate in fooling Rhodey without having to lie. In the grand scheme of things it was nothing, and yet it felt like so much more. It felt like they were aligned in the way soulmates should be.

That feeling shattered, ironically, the instant Rhodey said, "maybe God wasn't completely wrong about you two as soulmates, then," and Tony grimaced. The shock of mixed negative feelings from Tony hit his shield like a boulder, and had him grinding his teeth until they hurt. The bond was being flooded with those feelings, like the sudden destruction of a barrage, and no matter how much Loki tried to keep the flow out of his mind with his shield, they dripped in regardless.

"You don't have to glare like that. Sorry, okay? The soulmate thing sucks, I get it." Rhodey said, and it sounded like he was repeating words Tony might have uttered, and that hurt. Deep down, though, he understood perfectly well where the sentiment was coming from – Loki had many reasons to hate his current fate, though at the moment he could only think of one, and that was Tony's feelings towards him. "But you can't change it, so you'll just have to find a way to live with it. And resolve your problems with Loki."

"There's nothing to resolve." The lie scratched hard at Loki's core.

"How come I don't believe that?"

"Because you're a suspicious bastard?"

"No, because I—" J.A.R.V.I.S. cut the feed, and no manner of pleading – or, in a moment of weakness, of threatening material destruction as if he was an upset child – made J.A.R.V.I.S. return the image. Loki could understand that the artificial intelligence would side with his creator, but it still stung for some unfathomable reason.

Loki turned back to his book. Two sentences in, he slammed it back down on the armrest. Anger and a stab of stubborn reluctance, exasperation with a touch of disgust, and a miasma of confusing feelings; they kept pounding, resounding loud in his head and he couldn't keep them out. Before he knew it, he had jumped up and restlessly stalked around the room twice.

Fine. If J.A.R.V.I.S. would not show him the kitchen, he would find the kitchen himself. Loki took a deep calming breath and smoothed over his shielding. The problem was that Tony knew where he was at all times – if he concentrated enough on their bond. If Loki wanted to eaves-drop, he couldn't just count on Tony being too distracted not to notice his proximity. He had not really analysed the section of the bond pertaining to location – an obvious oversight. He had not really needed to hide where he was before now, but that was no excuse.

He found the spot inside him that made the string of their bond throb when he thought of where Tony was right now, and instinctually smothered it, pressed down on it, until the knot there grew tighter, smaller. More noticeable to Loki, almost painfully so. He waited a few beats, but there was no change in Tony's current stream of emotion, hinting that at least he had not done something that made Tony notice him more. There was no way to know if like this Tony would notice him less, of course. He would just have to take his chances.

He headed down towards the kitchen, going to it from the rear entrance he had noticed the Black Widow use for her own skulking. He stopped there in the shadows, too far away for him to see inside, but close enough to hear every breath the Midgardians took.

"You're not sure, aren't you?" Rhodey said, echoing the feelings that had been coming over the bond; uncertainty and worry for the most part. "You're not sure if magic is manipulating you or not." Loki's eyebrows twitched. What magic? Loki's? Did Rhodey think that Loki would— No. Rhodey was alluding to the fact that Tony thought he was being manipulated. Loki's breath stilled in his lungs like ice. "You're scared."

"I'm not!" The lie burned bright in his chest, and the ice around his heart grew. Was Tony scared of him?

"Tony Stark is afraid of genuine feelings. What else is new?"

"Oh fuck you, Rhodes. I don't see you being all lovey-dovey with someone either."

"Man, that's a low blow. I don't have time to socialise outside of work and you know it. And I'm not Iron Man. Things don't fall into my lap for free."

"I don't think being Iron Man has anything to do with this." A wave of doubt, followed by determination. "Free stuff is overrated anyway."

"Finding your soulmate is overrated? You're breaking the hearts of millions of teenage girls."

Loki expelled a silent breath that was almost a laugh. Since the moment he had heard his mother's tales about soulmates – revered and admired and seen as the luckiest beings in the Nine Realms – he had expressed the desire to find his; he had endured the mocking when he told Thor, who then told the to-be Warriors Three, and within a day everyone in the palace knew. He had been labelled a dreamer, a romantic, not someone with the needed mentality to be an Asgardian warrior – a true warrior fought on his own. Suffice it to say he had disillusioned them of that idea with a few well-placed, painful pranks. He had never mentioned soulmates again, and yet he had secretly still hoped he would be one of the chosen few who found theirs before Helheimr. Even when he was the unluckiest person on Asgard.

Tony had not been what he had dreamed of. And yet now he was everything Loki wanted. It seemed he was much like a young Midgardian girl since Tony finding that meeting his soulmate was 'overrated' broke his heart too. How low he had fallen.

"They wouldn't be so fond of the idea if they realised their soulmate could be some old violent creepy dude."

Was that how Tony saw him? His breath misted in the frigid air.

"Or their soulmate could be a godly magic prince who looks like a super model. If they heard you complain you couldn't set foot on the street anymore. There would be a girl on every corner waiting to claw your eyes out."

"Teenage girls are scary." There was a smile in his voice. It felt like they were laughing at his heartbreak. Mocking him. His nails poked holes into his palms. The only thing he could feel was emptiness.

"Ain't that the truth," Rhodey said. After a few beats of silence that felt like a lifetime, there were footsteps and rustles of cloth. "Come on, man, don't look so gloomy. It could be worse."

"Could it?"

Tony's answer hung heavy in the air, choking him; it did not feel enough like the lie it should be, and Loki could not stand it anymore. He had to see— though what he had to see he did not know. There was nothing to see. He could feel it all. Tony did not think his fate could be any worse. Loki knew his own fate; while quite terrible as it was, meeting Tony was, he had realised, the best thing that had happened to him in eons. Or so he had thought.

He stepped into the kitchen, but the mortals did not see him. "Obviously," he answered Tony, his voice devoid of his inner turmoil. Tony's flinch was like a knife to the heart. "Your soulmate could have been Thor. Or even better, Volstagg."

Loki stiffly walked past the table, kept his eyes on his destination and was out the other doors and down the stairs before he had consciously decided where to go. Tony's flare of feelings was too bright, too painful, and he shoved at them harder than ever before, hiding his own lack of everything behind triple and quadruple padlocks on his chest-shaped shield. Somehow he felt utterly, excruciatingly alone. Ironically, he felt more alone than ever before, despite the fact that he could technically never be alone again. He had been alone on other Realms before, he had been out of favour before, but having your soulmate wish you were someone else, literally anyone else…

He reached the bottom of the stairs and pushed at the doors, feet slapping the marble of the lobby. That's when he registered his current state of dress; nothing more than grey trousers and a white button-up shirt. No shoes, and nothing to hide his Jötunn form. He also realised that the noise that had been trying to cut through his inner turmoil was a frenetic J.A.R.V.I.S..

"Mr Friggason, please! I cannot guarantee your safety if you leave Sir's Tower."

"I am not some feeble mortal!" he spat back. "I don't need your protection."

"Mr Friggason, I know you are hurting, but please listen! Sir did not mean what he said. I know Sir, and I know he is the best at lying to himself, but I can guarantee you—"

Loki stopped just shy of the closed glass doors. "You don't know him as well as you think you do. Tony is not stupid enough to know how to lie to himself convincingly. Certainly not convincingly enough to fool the soul bond. Contrary to you, who doesn't have the benefit of having either magic, body or soul, and therefore cannot possibly fathom what true feelings entail, I, as his soulmate, can guarantee you that Tony meant his every word." Loki glared up at the closest camera. "Open the doors."

"No. I'm sorry Mr Friggason, but I cannot in good conscience—"

Loki stopped listening. He pushed against the glass, and it took much more force than he had expected for the spiderweb of cracks to appear – he suspected this was not glass at all. Still, the doors were not strong enough to stop him. He just punched a hole through one of them and folded away the milky fractured sheets until he could step through.

This morning's clear sky had vanished, replaced by humid greyness and a drizzle that gradually froze on Loki's skin. Loki registered his heavy breathing, and his still somewhat active innate ice magic. He had to calm down. He could not go around giving frostbite to innocent, fragile mortals. And if he wanted some peace, he couldn't be broadcasting his feelings and location to Tony like some space-faring beacon.

"Mr Friggason!" J.A.R.V.I.S. still called after him, and he walked away from the broken doors and to one of the triangles of young trees that bordered Tony's property, right next to the empty pavement. He didn't dare touch them, but he stared at one of the leaves and the barely-there flow of magic that tethered it to Yggdrasil. He breathed in and out with the slow pulse of the energy that entangled the Nine Realms together – a pattern Queen Frigga had taught him so long ago he couldn't remember how old he had been. It had been before she taught him the basics of magic; the stabilisation of one's magical core.

Loki's core was so empty it had cracked in places, starting to implode on itself because of the lack of magical pressure. It was in a worse state than it had been after his half-soul merged with Tony's. It took him a moment to realise what could have hurt it so. When he did, he wanted nothing more than to hit his head against something hard. Norns, he was so dim-witted sometimes. He had hurt himself in his rush to clean himself and hide from his soulmate this morning; hurt himself almost bad enough to cripple his magical abilities forever.

The horror of that thought had him reeling, but he managed to push that feeling down after a few seconds. He needed to remain calm. His Jötunn ice might not come from his core directly but using it was still dangerous to it. He needed to be careful. Much more careful of his own wellbeing than usual. If he wanted to keep Tony safe, he needed to take care of himself. That was not something he was good at. "Never have been," he murmured at the shrubbery. When he looked down, the drizzle now merely condensed on his hands, sticking to him in droplets speckled between the ridges of his skin.

The state of his core had at least sobered his emotional state up enough to enforce control back over his shielding too. Tony had not been so petty as to steal the shield while he was distracted. Loki's control over it slid into place easily, and he probed at his location-end of the bond until he pressed down onto it like earlier. This time, a sense of alarm spiked through the whirlwind of Tony's feelings. Ah, so suppressing the location did work enough for his soulmate to notice. That was as good a time as any to make his escape, then.

Loki started down the empty street at a quick pace. All the rubble had been cleared, and the road was in a relatively good state; and yet, it was empty. Empty of Midgardian vehicles. Empty of Midgardians. And yet he could hear the traffic and bustle of life that came from the city all around him. No one was anywhere near the Tower, however.

He discovered the reason for that at the next intersection. Down the streets on either side, a barricade with accompanying guards stopped anyone from coming closer to the Tower. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s doing, most probably. Director Fury only trusted Tony so much, it would seem.

The guards would make walking away more difficult, certainly. Loki could try finding a route through the surrounding buildings, but that could give whoever J.A.R.V.I.S. decided to notify enough time to find him before he had even had the chance to step out of the Tower's shadow. He needed to get past the guards somehow. Preferably without hurting them. S.H.I.E.L.D. would not leave him be if it looked like he was a danger to anyone.

Damaged cars were still parked along the pavement, and Loki kept low as he approached the barricade. The two guards faced away from him, keeping an eye on the bustling street before them. He needed to slip by them without them noticing. He could think of so many ways he could have done it with his magic; teleporting himself to the other side, throwing an illusion over himself to look like someone else, throwing an illusion over the street to make him invisible and slip by them unseen, making himself momentarily unnoticeable to their eyes only, distracting them with an illusion of some sort… Now he could only hope to distract them some other way.

He took in the street and its traffic for a few seconds. At least a dozen solutions came to him; only one of them would – probably – not make Tony frown at him disapprovingly. He pried a piece of metal the length of his finger off of the nearest car – the vehicle was already damaged beyond Midgardian repair anyway. Loki crept as close to the concrete blocks interspersing the street as he dared, and waited for the right moment. The lights switched, the idling cars on either side roared to life and Loki stood. Took aim. Threw.

The yellow car's tyre exploded in a mighty bang and the car swerved; it hit its neighbour, pushing it in the way of the cars coming opposite, and in a cacophony of horns the vehicles crashed into each other, fronts to fronts and fronts to backs. With the attentions of the guards solely on the accident and the growing wave of slamming doors and raging voices, Loki slipped past and hurried down the pavement, away from the Tower, and staying as close to the building walls as possible.

The first Midgardians didn't notice him, their attention monopolised by the cars as well. It didn't take long for the pedestrians further down the street to see his blue skin; there was a larger and larger bubble of space around him, pushing the oncoming, wide-eyed walkers aside just by his presence, the space slowing dying in the wake of his passage. It took less than a block for a number of foolish mortals to follow him with their phones held aloft – you'd think those people would be more wary of aliens when they'd been invaded so very recently. But then again, they'd simply thrown down some metal plates on the cracked pavement and taped off broken windows and gone back to their daily, useless bustle.

Loki saw the light of the closest crosswalk turn red and he hurried across, hoping to lose his growing following. It didn't work. The Midgardians simply crossed the street despite the pushy cars and ear-splitting horns. It took all Loki had not to whirl around and just… He had no idea what he would do. Scream at the idiots not to follow him? That wouldn't work. And growling at them like his Jötunn instincts told him to do was utterly beneath him. So he walked on, back straight and regal. He was Prince Loki of Asgard. Growling was beneath him.

"Hey. Hey, you! Blue man! You related to the blue woman that was holding Iron Man's hand on TV?" one of his followers called. Loki glanced back, and he caught the dark-skinned boy's eye from behind the phone held in his outstretched hand. The gall of these brainless, disrespectful—

"Dude. Dude!" the boy's friend was chanting as he tugged on the boy's shirt. "He is the blue chick that was with Stark! Look at his hair! Look at how tall he is." Loki clenched his fists and walked on.

"No way, man! You're the woman?" Loki could not stop himself from whirling around, and he could not have stopped the deep growl even if he had been in his Asgardian form.

"I am not a woman," he said, loud enough for half the street to hear. He should calm down. He should be more dignified.

"You're a guy?" the boy asked then. As if he was doubting that that was the only other possible answer. He was not wrong.

"Yes," Loki hissed anyway. He felt something awaken in the bond at the half-lie, and the feelings on Tony's side sharpened to single-minded determination and the burn of a spike of anger. "No," Loki admitted automatically, as if the truth his soulmate would not feel could stop ire being directed at him. "I am neither and both," Loki clarified before turning away.

"Josh, dude, you gotta post this. We're gonna go viral!" the boy's friend said, and their voices grew fainter as Loki ate up the pavement, and the crowd that shadowed him swallowed the boys up.

His steps faltered when tugs twanged at his core. 'COME BACK,' they spelled, and snorting, Loki picked up the pace again. So now Tony wanted him back? Or did his soulmate just want him to stay away from the mortal populace? Tony just wanted him to remain inside his home so he could keep an eye on him through his ever watchful J.A.R.V.I.S.. Well, Loki was not some princess to be locked up in a tower, like Midgardian tales suggested. That would just be trading one prison – S.H.I.E.L.D.'s or Asgard's, it didn't matter – for another – his soulmate's tower.

Could they not just all leave him alone? Especially the mortal crowd. Not that he was not used to attention; he was a prince after all. It was just that the other Realms were not as brazen in their interest, and they were certainly more respectful – even when they mocked him behind closed doors, calling him the weak, magic-wielding argr that Odin wished he had never fathered. Loki guessed those mockers were happy to know that at least they never wasted any respect on him, given that he was Jötunn. And that Odin never had to wish he did not father him, since he actually never did.

The Midgardian attention was different from what he grew up with, though. They did not know his status. He was the exotic, somewhat frightening alien; but not frightening enough to flee him. An ally to the great Avengers. They pictured him as one of the 'good guys'. Ergo the liberties they were taking, following him, talking about him loud enough for him to hear, taking pictures of him with their phones, asking him for things like 'selfies', whatever those were. It did not take long for a few mortals with big cameras to come along and circle his shrinking bubble of personal space, throwing more and more questions his way, accompanied by unnecessary flashes of light.

"Tell us, Sir, what is your name?"

"Where did you come from? Do you know Thor?"

"What is your relationship with Mister Stark?"

"Do you know anything about the reason and origin of the recent invasion of New York City?"

Sick of the idiotic – or sometimes too sharp – mortals and their incessant curiosity, Loki abruptly stopped walking, almost causing enough people to trip over themselves to cause a rolling wave of sprawling limbs. As it was, enough managed to hold onto each other to keep a flesh wall standing all around him.

"Leave. Me. Alone," he growled loudly. A few flinched back, but not enough to create an escape route. It was disappointing, how useless his red eyes and sharp teeth were when he actually found a purpose for them. He straightened his shirt, smoothing down the crinkling, untucked panes. "Fine." He'd just have to outrun them.

He started forward abruptly, which made a few more step back – it was just enough for him to push past the mortals without accidentally pushing them too hard, and before they could think to try grabbing his shirt or something else just as inane, he was running, zigzagging between the unknowing pedestrians and crossing streets in a discordance of screeching tyres. But at least he had lost the gawkers and the photographers, and even the few black-suited people who tried to run after him for the first block. S.H.I.E.L.D. would need better and faster runners to keep up with him.

Under all the fumes and putrid smells, and beyond the dissonance of food smells, his nose caught hints of vegetation. With the buildings and the breeze it was hard to pinpoint the origin; if he felt for Yggdrasil's branches, however, he could see the direction in which they reached. Yggdrasil preferred the magic of vegetation over that of creatures, it always had.

'COME BACK,' Tony sent him.

'LOKI'. He ignored it.

'COME ON. SHIELD WONT LET YOU RUN AROUND.' So Tony did know what he was doing. Could he still feel where Loki was, or had he found another way to monitor his whereabouts?

Suddenly the buildings on Loki's right stopped, replaced by green. With a quick look at the road Loki crossed to the other pavement and came to a stop amid the shocked-looking mortals gathered on a plaza with an ostentatious golden statue of a woman and a horse rider. The neighing of a real horse surprised him and he watched a carriage clop on by among the cars, before surveying the low-walled edge of the tree-line on the other side of the road. There had to be an entrance somewhere, but from his vantage point he could not see it.

"Excuse me. Can I ask what your costume is?" Loki turned to face the rather short woman. "Wow, that's really well made! The eyes are so realistic!" She looked this way and that. "Are you shooting a movie or something?"

"Where can I find the entrance to these gardens?" Loki asked instead of answering, gesturing at the trees behind him with a hand.

The woman looked past him with a frown and blinked up at him. "Did you lose the rest of your crew? And which garden are you talking about? There's the Shakespeare, or the Conservatory, or…" Loki gestured more emphatically behind him. Why were Midgardians so obtuse? "Are you talking about… Central Park, like, in general?"

Loki closed his eyes and breathed out slowly. "I am speaking about the vegetation behind me. Surely this is not a complicated thing to comprehend."

"Sorry, I didn't realise you were a tourist too. I mean, you obviously have a British accent, so that's just me being stupid. The shortest way into the park is right that way," she said, pointing.

"Thank you," Loki said as he walked off.

"Wait! What movie are you shooting? I want to see it when it comes out!" she called after him.

He crossed the short breadth of street, and at least she did not follow. He was starting to get a new gathering of curious mortals following him at a cautious distance, waving their phones around and whispering to each other. Loki sighed and went off at a trot again, slipping into Central Park through the entrance the woman had alluded to.

The amount of people inside the park, as well as the immediate lack of true wilderness, was disappointing to say the least. He had been right about calling it a garden; it was carefully monitored vegetation with crowded walking paths. The first thing Loki did was therefore to get off said path. The soles of his feet welcomed the soft grass, and all of a sudden the whole trek to get to this place was worth it. Now if he could just find somewhere quiet, it would be perfect.

Loki didn't dare slow down again, for fear of creating another goggling swarm of followers. His route was hindered more than once by water or lone buildings, and more than once his bond twanged with 'WHERE R U' and the like. Loki pressed down harder on his presence marker. Tony had rejected him so blatantly; now it was Loki's turn to do the same.

No cliff-hanger for once! I managed it! Aren't you glad? For those who were hoping to get Tony to, you know, kiss and make up… Sorry :D Doesn't mean it won't happen at some point, though, right ;)

Spread the Luv!

LL