Clarity is the devil's drug. It hits Tony's system like caffeine and he walks out of the cave cauterized. Loki's gift coat covers him like armor, and it's with a certain vigor that he slows to a stop in the main chamber.
"Loki." he calls, his voice echoing. The limits of the magic-name phenomenon are unclear. And Loki's magic is having an identity crisis, so that probably gets in the way too. It's worth a shot.
"Accio Loki."
Nothing.
"Loki, Loki, Loki, Loki, my dearest darling jackass, the machine to my oil, the pop to my corn-"
The aether senses an energy behind him. Instead of pulsing out it shrivels up and hides. That was faster than he expected. Tony grins, turning.
"You arse, I thought you were in trouble." Loki growls.
He stalks toward Tony wearing a put out expression that almost obscures his elevated pulse.
"In my defense, I didn't think it would work." he says softly, the echo of the room suddenly abrasive. Too loud. Their connection lives in the quiet spaces between catastrophic downpours. It feels wrong to have private words ringing.
"Well, bully for you. I was in the middle of something."
There's a manila envelope in his hand.
"Keeping up correspondence?"
"Of a sort." Loki huffs, flipping the package open and dumping the contents in his hand.
It's a stack of ID cards, and birth certificates. Social security numbers and passports with close cropped photos of the godlings.
"No way." Tony says, taking the stack from Loki and squinting at the small print.
"Fury." Loki says by way of explanation. "Unfortunately he did not have much information to offer. Only this-"
He slips a folded stack of paper from the bottom of the pile. It's a string of complex calculations and trajectories converted into a flight path. Tony pages through the stack, following the logic of the arithmetic.
"Whatever crack mind they got to do this forgot to factor in gravity."
"The craft is in space. It is the Titan's ship."
Tony checks again. Turns the page upside down. "He already has Strange."
"And Vision. The tower was attacked yesterday night. Hence the mathematics. Courtesy of NASA."
Shit, three stones for Thanos. They're running out of time.
"So the only possible objective is-"
"The Soul Stone." Loki nods. "I estimate the destination to be Helgentar."
"Time to make a move, then. They didn't impound our ship, did they?"
Loki returns the paperwork to the envelope and seals it. He flips the packet nervously between his hands.
"The tower is occupied." he hedges.
"But they haven't moved our stuff?"
"We have my stone." Loki protests, envelope flipping, flipping, flipping.
Tony grabs the damn thing and slips it under his arm. It's driving him nuts. He vividly remembers being stuck in a blizzard while Loki and Hela wrecked the Malibu house.
"We don't know what we're getting into. We need a ship."
Loki picks at his itchy skin and sighs. Now that he looks closer, he sees a tired resignation that wasn't there yesterday. Tony runs his thumb over his lines, and Loki brushes him off.
"What about Hela?" Tony asks.
"She-"
"Ze." Tony corrects.
"How many blasted pronouns does one language need?"
"As many as there are kinds of people." Tony says, trying to ignore the irony.
Loki tucks a hair behind his ear, sighing. "They made their wishes clear. I would be a fool to deny them."
"Look, I'm trying to help. Don't shoot the messenger."
He makes sure his hand doesn't touch skin when he sets it on Loki's lower back. Taking a step toward the exit, he only fully relaxes when Loki follows.
"So what is the plan?" Hela asks, morphing hir clothing into a black and green bodysuit Tony finds very age inappropriate.
They're huddled on the bean bags in Angry Buddha's house, tolerating one more obligatory round of spice tea. He was willing to skip it, but apparently that's illegal in these parts.
Hela taps hir nails on hir carved granite cup. Truth is, he and Loki don't really do plans anymore. When they change every five minutes, they sort of become something else. Intuition? Improvisation? Something like that.
He shrugs, laying out the vague idea that seemed very well thought out in the shrine. "The raisin has power, time, and mind. If we get the soul stone, it's a three versus three."
"There are worse odds." Loki says, the leather of his green and silver armor squeaking against the hide seat.
"And what if we fail?" Hela asks.
Loki sighs. "I'm not sure we're allowed to."
"We know we can't overpower him." Tony says, because they might as well admit it. A head on fight is a no-win scenario. He looks to Loki. Clever ideas are supposed to be his thing.
Loki shakes his head. "Unless he is secretly weak to mistletoe, I have no techniques for killing immortals."
"Would he freeze in space?" Tony asks.
"I wouldn't." Loki quips.
"Disintegration?" Hela says.
"The power stone could block it." Loki replies, "And time could reverse it."
"Meteor?"
"Too slow."
"Ragnarok?" Hela says.
Tony opens his mouth automatically to refute hir... and shuts it. Glances are exchanged, everyone waiting for someone to say no. And nobody does.
"Possible." Loki finally says, "Very possible."
Hela's face lights up, hir hands gesticulating. "All we would have to do is trap him on Asgard. Surely even he could not survive Surtur's blade?"
"It's far from a guarantee-" Tony says.
"His sword derives power from the souls he has slain. Many gods fell to him in the time of Bor." Loki says, a tiny spark of hope igniting in his eyes.
Tony feels himself latch onto that look, even as he's trying desperately not to give in to his own revived optimism. Nothing hurts like losing hope after you've just got it back.
"It is true, I have seen it." Hela says, energetic and bright.
Loki shoots hir a disturbed look and ze dismisses it with a roll of hir eyes.
"I was collecting the soul. But it got sucked in the blade. Lady Death was furious-"
"Hold up, we're getting ahead of ourselves. What about the soul stone?" Tony asks.
"What does it do? Is it like one of yours?" Hela asks.
"Safe to say it has something to do with souls." Tony shrugs, "And it depends on the user. My stone does way more for me than it did for the dark elf."
"I already have power over souls." Hela says, frowning thoughtfully.
"More importantly-" Loki interrupts, looking between them, "Would Surtur's blade hold any power if the Titan could release the souls?"
Hela drinks deeply and blows out a harsh breath. "It would be no more powerful than a butter knife."
Tony nods, pushing himself up and taking Hela's empty mug to the kitchen.
He puts both cups in the wash basin and turns to where Angrboða is slicing vegetables on the other side of the kitchen worktop.
"Hear that, Big Easy? Looks like we're out of your hair."
The not-so gentle giant glances over their shoulder, not pausing in the cutting.
"We'll need you to look after the little bits. Until we get back."
Angrboða sets the knife on the slate counter. They turn around, wiping their hands on a jute cloth and throwing it over their shoulder. They are so damn composed, all the time. It bugs him.
"Did you find your truth?" they ask, and fuck it but he knows exactly what they mean. He wipes at his nose, because it runs constantly on this planet.
"For what good it does, yeah."
Angrboða nods. "Do not lose sight. Our truths lead us on the proper paths."
"You know, I really wish I didn't understand you."
"I will pray for your return."
That surprises Tony, but he doesn't have time to do anything about it. The little biters pad in from the other side of the donut house, Fen's hair sticking up and Jori rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"Tony, Tony, I had a dream." Jori says, yawning.
"Who cares? You dream all the time." Fen grumbles.
"But this one was a good dream." Jori says, elbowing Fen. "It was raining candy and Big Bird wanted to dance with me."
"Was he a good dancer?" Tony asks, squatting down. He's glad they're subdued from nap time. Breaking the news is less liable to instigate a rebellion.
"The best." Jori says sincerely, hands on his hips. Tony pivots to Fen.
"And you? Got any food related weather?"
Fen shrugs, itching his butt.
"Snow." he says, which means a nightmare. The puppy was chained up in a cave on top of a mountain. Jotunheim probably isn't the best place for him.
"Did you remember anything this time?"
Fen crosses his arms, and glances at his machem like he's embarrassed. Based on their perturbed expression he's got a good reason to be. Something tells Tony tender emotions aren't welcome here.
"Chains." he says.
Tony nods, fixing Fen's messy hair. "I have those dreams too. How did it end?"
"Stayed in there, forever."
Standing up for moment, Tony snags a couple slices of food from the counter. He holds one out to each of the boys and ignores Angrboða's mutinous frown.
"Your dad and I came, in real life. You know he and your mechem will always come and find you."
Fen looks doubtfully at Angrboða, and Tony winces. Obviously, they hadn't. Still.
"They will. And me too, if I can." Tony says. "Promise."
"Pinky promise?" Jori asks.
Fen glares at him. "Shut up, Jori."
Tony gives Fen the look, and he mumbles an apology. Chews on his veggie stick.
Tony holds out his pinky anyway. It beats the old spit shake by a mile. Fen wraps his little finger around Tony's.
"Pinky promise." Tony says, and Fen rubs his face.
"You're leaving again aren't you?" he asks. Too smart, all Loki's kids are too smart.
"I won't lie, it's bad this time. But we're going to do whatever it takes to get back. You're gonna stay here, and we'll be back before you know it."
"If you don't I'll fart on Hela until she gets your soul and brings it back." Fenrir threatens.
"That's the spirit. Alright, bring it in." Tony says, pulling them both in and patting their backs.
When he stands up, Loki and Hela are hovering behind him. With some hand waving, he gets them both to repeat the process. It's kind of poetic. His dad spent years forcing him to be an unfeeling zombie, and here he is pressuring his emotionally stunted brats to feel things.
He doesn't have any desire to touch Angrboða, but the cycle of goodbyes leaves them both standing awkwardly to the side.
When they reach to shake, he grabs their forearm and weeds out any judgmental feelings on the off chance they leak through. Angrboða's fingers completely circle his elbow, and even if it was the polite thing to do it gives him the creeps.
"They're great kids. You should be proud." he says, because he heard it on the Today Show once and it sounded pretty slick.
"You coddle them."
Tony shrugs. "It's a gift."
"Let's not waste time." Loki sighs, pulling his cape from a hook on the wall. "The sooner we leave the sooner we may return."
Tony hopes so. He really, really does.
The Arizona base is heavily defended, as expected. The three of them step through a portal to the hangar and a hundred personnel pull out their weapons.
"Anybody who wants a paycheck better put their bazookas down." Tony says, his red and gold suit materializing around his raised arms.
Sixty or so lower their weapons.
Great, some overachieving middle manager must be recruiting employees with principles.
"We may want to relocate." Loki says mildly, summoning a portal at their feet. The three of them land in the atmo shuttle, mostly upright. Loki and Hela do anyway, because it wouldn't be his life if he didn't fall on his ass.
"Remember the plan, Slayer?" Tony asks, getting up.
"Move the crane. Drop the ship on the rocket. Activate the launch sequence." Hela recites. A glamour traveling up hir legs and over hir torso, until ze's a perfect replica of a research assistant. Complete with name tag. Now that's talent.
"Gold star. And Loki-"
Loki wrinkles his nose. "Stay on the ship. I know."
He stomps through the door to the cockpit, and Tony chooses to ignore the attitude. There are bigger fish outside, highly trained ones with assault rifles.
Hela approaches the airlock ramp and slams the button to open it. He slides his vizor down and darkness blocks everything except a wireframe outline of the ship's walls. Stepping behind Hela, he summons his arrays and wraps an arm around hir neck.
The ramp crashes down. Show time.
He holds an array to Hela's head and struts out of the shuttle like a fighter entering the ring. Guns cock in every direction and he holds the aether by the proverbial neck. This is a spectacle. A diversion. Nobody needs to get hurt.
Men and women yell, and an officer on a loudspeaker commands him to release his hostage. Hela shrieks, giving the performance of a lifetime as his HUD informs him of at least two hundred hostiles. He projects his voice from the suit's speakers.
"Everybody be cool. I'm just picking up my stuff, and then I'll be on my way."
Feet hammer on concrete, people running away and security running to.
"Let her go, Stark." a man calls.
"Don't shoot!" Hela cries, kicking and struggling against a hold that's not actually tight. "Please, I have children."
"Stay where you are, and nobody gets hurt." Tony says in his best villain voice. He hopes he doesn't over do it. Is there such thing as overdoing an evil monologue?
Something shifts in the room, bodies moving and making the air pressure change.
An accented voice carries over the din. "Do you know how it feels to be used, Tony Stark?"
Hazy shapes resolve into a petite female form, approaching with her hands in a come hither motion. Wanda Maximov. This day gets better and better.
"More than you know, Red." Tony says, making his array glow like it's powering up.
"You are a menace to the world. I will make you pay for the lives you took."
Lives. Plural. Tony's glad for his face plate. He can't hold character. Hela screams in his arms, and there's no denying it any longer. He's a bad guy now. Blood on his hands and a dollar sign on his head.
The Scarlet Bitch gathers power, her fingers plucking through reality in a way he recognizes. Axiomatic voids, son of a bitch.
Wanda releases the bolt, and Tony recreates the red translucent shield around his hand. Primal force blows him and Hela back several inches, but doesn't pass through.
"Good luck." he whispers, shoving Hela aside. Taking off, he spins and slams a boot into Wanda's torso. She collides with a glass partition, rolling to land on her feet with an arm holding her chest.
Landing in a crouch, he adjusts his visor to show targets in melee range. There's about a dozen, all charging at once. By the time he's got them down, Wanda's preparing another attack.
The power behind her strikes makes his hair stand up. Wild, untamed magic beats against his shield, shaking his arm and testing his strength. Then his feet leave the ground. Wanda has telekinesis. Not good. He hits the back wall like a freight train, but it's not his first rodeo.
"Altitude flaps." he grunts, the back panels of his suit pushing him out of the hole. His repulsors kick on, and he aims for a knockout punch.
Wanda side steps, a tendril of ruby mindfuckery extending toward his head. The aether lashes out, and she crashes hard into a concrete beam.
Her vitals hover on his display. Unconscious. Minor injuries.
"FRIDAY, you there babe?" he shouts, powering up his thrusters. Guards shuffle into a circle around him.
A pleasant Irish accent answers from the P.A. system. "At your service, boss."
"Gimme a fast beat."
The beginning chords of an eighties rock anthem thump through the speakers, and Tony cracks his neck. Eyes the crowd as he puts his fists up in a boxing stance.
"Good thing you guys get dental coverage." he says, and the guards rush him in a blur of punches and kicks. Music blasts through his ears, his body moving in sync and falling into the rhythm of a good fight.
A loud crashing sounds behind him, and the opponents stop. A repetitive beeping noise announces the lowering of the shuttle. A good chunk of the goon squad rushes toward the crane and Tony fires an off target blast to reclaim their attention. Another bout of unexceptional fighting, and then the floor gets pretty crowded. Nobody's dead, but there are definitely some bruised egos.
The last of the forces retreat after the second round. Hela skids out of an emergency exit tailed by twelve scientists, and the run back to the shuttle is pure fun. It's probably bad for him to enjoy this, but the Cave of Wonders straightened a few things out. He's beyond saving, morally and otherwise. There's no reason not to get some kicks while he can.
They pass by centrifuges and ballistics labs, and emerge back in the aircraft hangar. Wanda's still unconscious. Stopping at her side, he lifts his visor.
Hela looks over hir shoulder, running past. "The countdown has started. Hurry."
Tony waves her on, distracted by the dark circles under Wanda's eyes.
"FRIDAY, send a request to Pepper. Corporate email, addressed from me. Have her set up a foundation for Sokovian Relief under a shell company. No mention of me or Stark anything."
"How much funding should I allocate?"
"I dunno, proportional to the losses. You can do the math."
"Two minutes." Hela calls.
"Done, boss." FRIDAY says.
"Pleasure working with you, doll." Tony says.
"You are a sap." Hela replies, jumping on his back when he takes flight. They soar to the shuttle at the top of the rocket, and the hangar ceiling opens just as he drops in the shuttle's airlock.
"Took you long enough." Loki drawls.
Tony dismisses the suit and ruffles Loki's hair. "I'm happy to see you too."
"You were rather brutal with the enhanced girl."
Tony meets Loki's eye, surprised to see a look of concern. Moral judgement from Loki is a new one. He sits in the co-pilot's seat and buckles the harness.
"If they call me a villain I might as well act like one."
"That is a very slippery slope."
Tony shrugs. Karma can hardly bite him in the span of a few days. Might as well go out with a bang. He doesn't say it out loud though. Loki's better off without the reminder.
Busying himself with final checks, he programs the trajectory and slouches as much as he can in a bucket seat.
The rocket ignites, and for the next ten minutes all he can think is gee, that's a lot of gravity.
The Helgentar system got the name from a nearby garbage dump.
A refuse ship must have malfunctioned or something, because space junk floats aimlessly around like an asteroid field of scrap metal and food wrappers.
They're headed for a moon called Hel, no relation. According to the locals Helgentar was named from the old phrase meaning litter-infested shithole. Which would make Hel either 'litter' or 'shithole' depending on the sentence structure. If Loki pilots them through one more loop, Tony's going to add some organic matter to the littery shithole regardless of the name.
Debris resembling a dismantled escape pod misses them by inches. Cursing, he checks the navigation displays. The three dimensional map has about a million dots, all flying in unpredictable directions.
"I think we should turn around." he yells over the roar of engines and the incessant wailing of alarms. The shuttle is not happy about this situation either. It was designed for short treks in and out of orbit, not this ridiculous Star Wars crap. He has no interest in dying by light-speed garbage, thank you very much.
"We have to be thorough." Loki says, wrenching the control sticks and sending them into a corkscrew.
"Can't you teleport us?"
Hela whips off the communications headset and slaps the back of Loki's seat repeatedly.
"Dad, I hear something. There's another ship-"
"Was that a toilet seat? I swear to god if I die with a crapper around my neck-"
"One person at a time, if you please." Loki snaps, lurching the craft around a cube of compacted steel.
"Dad, I think-" Hela says at the same time Tony says, "The stone, Loki, use your fucking-"
"If I move us from space to a pressurized environment our shuttle will collapse." Loki shouts, "I am starting to doubt the validity of your doctorates, Stark."
"Will either of you fucking listen to me?" Hela yells, slamming hir hand on the communication console.
The alarms quiet as the device overrides the speakers. Sudden, jarring silence invades the cockpit and then—chittering, clicking, insect-like screeching. Chitauri.
"Language." Tony mumbles under his breath, his skin crawling at the haunting noise.
"Give me a coordinate." Loki says, pulling the controls back to center and leveling out their path.
"Where's the signal coming from?" Tony asks, zooming out on his map.
"I don't know, it's just noise." Hela says, eyes darting around hir work space.
"Sound is a waveform. It has a direction." Tony says, leaning over hir shoulder and twisting some dials. The messy wave on Hela's station becomes more distinct, and he sends the reading to his own console. Plotting the line on his map, he follows its path until it collides with a planet.
"Vormir?" he reads, squinting at the fuzzy hologram. Weird name. He shoots the coordinates to Loki's station, and the computer projects them on the shuttle's windshield.
"Take the helm." Loki says, dropping the controls and digging under his collar for the locket. The craft lurches, and Tony scrambles to grab the joysticks before they crash. A few tense seconds of swerves and dives buys Loki the time he needs, and a portal appears in front of them.
They come out the other side to a real life game of Gallaga. A sprawling armada orbits a large, orange planet with a moon eclipsing a nearby star. Most of the ships are small fighters, aligned in organized clusters and awaiting deployment. The mothership is unmistakable, rows of transparent tubes wrapping around a gargantuan helix shaped hull. Even at this distance Tony can see tiny figures rushing up and down the tubes.
A section of the mothership breaks off with a flare of propulsion jets. It's equipped with heat resistant panels that mark it as a craft designed to make landfall. Tony throws the switch for stealth mode, and hopes like hell they haven't been spotted.
Hela presses the headphones back on hir ears and listens, eyes unfocused as ze dials hir attention. Fingernails tapping on the console, Tony wills the goosebumps on his arms to go away.
Loki steers them around, falling into orbit on the back side of the planet. The whole time Hela sits perfectly still, intent. With a sigh, ze meets Tony's gaze and shakes hir head.
"I don't think we were detected."
Loki queues up the landing sequence, and turns on the fasten seat belt sign with a quirk of his lips. Tony sighs, and can't help the fondness that slips onto his face. It's always fun and games with Loki.
The heat of the atmosphere burning over the windshield looks like a dying star, and Tony tries not to project any symbolism onto that.
Touching down on the planet's surface, he's struck by the barren wastes.
They hide the ship in the shadow of a cliff, just out of sight near the base of two black spires. The monument caught Tony's eye from the air, and something about it called to him. Pointing through the sandblasted windshield, he told Loki to park there.
Remnants of civilization line the crumbling staircases. Cracked spires and broken clay pots tell a story of lost life, the city turned into a cemetery. Wind howls through the ruins, and when he sets foot on the soil he feels like he's going to sink in.
Loki and Hela drop anchor, and Tony just stands there in awe. The universe is vast, so phenomenally big. He remembers eating cereal on the kitchen cabinets at ten years old, watching TV and seeing the first photographs of Saturn from the Voyager satellite. The planet has rings, the morning show hosts said with delight, Look at that, you can see the rings.
Billions of light years farther than Saturn, he is standing on a planet whose sole light source is a permanent eclipse. The sheer mathematical improbability of that, the gravitational balance, it roots him to the spot. For once he's not faking humility as he stands at the edge of everything and gazes on stars he was never meant to sees. It's profound, and then it's over.
A large craft plummets through the atmosphere, flame bright on its descent.
"Look." Hela says, pointing.
Loki cranes his neck, tying down the last of the anchors. "Quickly, then."
The trek is not long. Worn avenues cross the once developed planet, and boulders provide cover from the long sight lines. He alters the suit into a sleeker design, better suited to stealth and speed. If they stumble into a head-on confrontation they've lost anyway, so he might as well adapt.
Low voices alert them to their target's position and they duck under a nearby rock, listening.
Thanos isn't alone. A dark cloaked figure leads him along a path, and he drags a green-skinned woman behind him. She doesn't look happy to be there.
"Who's she?" Tony whispers, leaning into Loki's side for the simple reassurance of it. Loki shakes his head.
"There are two daughters. Gamora and Nebula. I don't know how they look."
The cloaked figure draws ahead of his guests."What you seek lies in front of you. As does what you fear."
"What is this?" Ga-Nebula asks, looking up at the mirrored spires.
"The price." the wraith replies. "Soul holds a special place among the Infinity Stones. You might say it has a certain wisdom. The stone demands a sacrifice."
Just what he was afraid of—Indiana Jones bullshit. A sacrifice, a soul. Loki's face is a study in blankness, and they have a twenty minute argument silently in two seconds. He grabs his wrist in an echo of their time in the cave.
Loki sets his jaw. "I will not-"
"We're out of time for denial."
"No." Loki hisses, and Tony could handle it if his eyes weren't glassy. If he weren't blinking twice as fast. Hela's watching them from hir place across the path, and he can't deal with it all at once. He needs more time, why the hell is there never enough time?
"Get out your daggers." he grunts, hitting Loki in the side when he doesn't. "Do I have to order you? Get out your daggers."
A woman's shout interrupts their near silent argument. Ga-Nebula struggles, hitting Thanos where he holds her at the wrist. He drags her toward the edge, thumping footsteps beating a path along the carved ground. Hela leaps out of cover, and a long black sword manifests in hir hand.
They can't fight this, they agreed. Tony motions for Hela to stop, and hir face only becomes more determined. He runs to stand in hir way, but he isn't fast enough. The blade leaves hir hand like a guillotine falling, and the woman's yelling morphs into a pained cry.
"Kid, what are you doing?" Tony asks, and Hela readies a second blade.
"If he kills her, the stone is lost." ze says, spinning to throw the sword with deadly accuracy. Thanos turns, shocked, and shoots a wild shot of purple energy behind him.
The sudden attack doesn't stop Thanos' march, if anything he hurries faster toward the edge. Loki rounds the other side of the spire and adds a trio of his own daggers to the onslaught. Apparently Tony's outvoted.
Gritting his teeth, he slides his face plate down and joins the fray. Thanos stands mere feet from the ledge, and Tony realizes with blistering certainty that they are facing their no-win scenario.
The gutted woman falls over the ledge with a heart-stopping scream. Her body lands with the snap of breaking bones, and when Thanos turns an amber stone shines in his open palm. The titan's brow dips, eyes wet and gleaming in genuine grief, and it's a special torture that Tony's last thought is this:
Thanos, tyrannical space emperor, killer of millions, self-appointed dark messiah, loves his kid more than Howard loved him.
The stone's power flares, and Tony closes his eyes, doesn't want to see Loki's face twist like it did on Sokovia. Can't bear to see him scream with all his teeth and abandon the mission to catch his corpse. So he closes his eyes and hopes he did enough, cared enough, chose the right words.
A body hits the ground. Not his.
Shocked back to awareness, he sees a dark form crumpled in the dirt. Black hair and blue skin. Loki.
Fog fills Tony's head. He stumbles, uncomprehending, toward his lover's body. There's a ringing in his ears like a broken radio. Piercing, shrieking static. Once, a million years ago at three in the morning, he got a ringing in his ear down in the workshop. JARVIS said it was a symptom of hearing loss, that a part if his eardrum was dying. Listen, sir, this may be the last time you hear this frequency. He didn't, of course. He was stupid then.
Now, a pitch chimes beneath the numbness as he runs. The last note of a melody Loki plucked on his heart. Sound is a waveform, it always has a direction. His feet follow it like divination. Even with his mind frozen in a bubble of shock, his legs take him on a path as unerring and straight as the Jotun lines. Loki's mouth is slack, and that's not right. It's meant for cut-glass grins and bone-deep insults, for biting and pouting and kissing Tony like nobody else.
Distantly he recognizes the clash of swords, but he has eyes only for Loki. Checking for a pulse is instinct, fingers pressed into newly healed skin. He waits, expecting to feel nothing, but a warm breath rustles the hair on his forearm. A faint rhythm jumps under his finger, and he stares into eyes as vacant and lifeless as marbles. Brain dead.
Alive, but not. Soulless.
His attention snaps outward with jarring speed when Hela yelps. Thanos has hir by the throat, raising up and up, and all Tony sees is the gauntlet. The big, gaudy power grab with four stones on it. This is the showdown he's been waiting for, and he knows he can't win. More importantly—and isn't it finally the truth, that this matters more to him than the rest of the universe—Loki's spirit is in the soul stone. He's not gone yet.
So while Thanos ignores Tony in favor of choking Hela, he opens himself to the aether. Despite limitless possibilities, and regardless of potentially ruinous consequences, he imagines a simple change. A universe where the stone in Loki's locket is the soul stone.
The aether makes it so.
"Hela, run." he orders, hoisting Loki up. He's always heavy, but this one pulls at his heart as much as his muscles. He takes flight.
Transformation creeps up Hela feet first. A green snake slips through Thanos' fingers, and turns into a Jotun dodge rolling away. Ze leaps over the cliff face, hair flying up in a weightless moment while ze changes again. A beat of the great falcon's wings stirs up a cloud of dust, and ze dives for the shuttle.
They land in a flurry of motion, and Tony cuts the anchors with a blade from Loki's belt. Destinations flick through his mind, none of them safe. How can they run from the Space Stone? No locale is remote enough.
Dragging Loki up the ramp and through the kitchenette, he does the backward two-step through the bedroom hatch and chokes at the ripped sheets. They were washed but never replaced. He thought it would be funny. Pictured Loki slinking off to bed only to stomp back blushing and annoyed, holding Tony's little trophy. Stupid, stupid.
He lays Loki on the bed like he'll break. Unclasping the locket, he sets the open face in his hand and stares at the dim amber stone. He touches it directly, reaching for it like he does the aether. It remains dormant.
Tony's breath catches, and he covers his face with his hand. Like the wraith man said, the stone demands a sacrifice. The life of someone he loves. Hela steps through the hatch, and Tony hates himself for what he's about to do.
He closes his fist around the dead stone and sets his jaw.
"I need a favor, kid."
Hela look lost, afraid. Far too young. He holds the necklace by the chain and lowers it into hir palm. Curls hir fingers into a fist and holds it in his hand.
"I need you to help me bring him back."
Ze shakes hir head, eyes wide with horror, and he looks away. Can't meet hir eyes.
He twists his wrist, and a pistol appears. One of his designs. Forty-four caliber. Solid steel frame. Not a bad way to go.
"No-" Hela whispers, nearly tripping when ze tries to back way and hits the bottom edge of the hatch.
"Your brothers need you to." he says calmly, steadying hir with a hand on hir elbow.
"I don't want to kill anyone."
"What's Loki's prophecy?"
"I can't-"
"Kid, your whole family is tied up in Ragnarok. Now tell me the truth, what's Loki's prophecy?"
"L-Light Surtur's crown on the eternal flame-"
"Exactly. Without him there's no Ragnarok. Without Ragnarok, we don't win."
"I don't know how to shoot-"
Metal clicks on metal as he flips the gun around and holds the handle out. With shaking hands, ze takes it and stares at Tony like ze's forgotten hir own name. He mimes a gun with his fingers and points to the back of his head, just above his neck.
"Right here, see the divit?" he says, and now he's shaking. Imagining cold still on his brain stem.
"I don't want to kill anyone." Hela pleads. Tony wants to shoot himself, but that's not how it works. For Hela to revive Loki, the stone has to obey hir. Ze has to pull the trigger.
"It's just point and click. It'll be-" Tony's voice cracks, and swallows. "I'll be dead before I hit the floor. I won't feel a thing."
Hela holds the gun out and tries to make him take it. He puts his hand around the barrel and angles the tip to his throat.
"You are the toughest, most resourceful, kindest person I know. This doesn't define you, alright? It doesn't. It's just something I need your help with."
The aether stirs within him, and he reminds himself of all the nights he and Hela sat on the couch throwing popcorn at each other. Falling asleep to Breaking Bad. Talking about the 'cute boys' in music videos. Ze's harmless, ze's not a threat.
The gun shakes in hir hand, and Tony steadies hir.
"He'll hate me. He'll blame me." ze says.
He slides hir finger over the trigger, and lays his thumb on top.
"It's okay. Close your eyes. We'll do it together." he says, checking his aim. His pulse hammers and it makes his Adam's apple brush the barrel. Quickly, now, before he loses his nerve.
"Three." he says, pressing his thumb and hir finger back. "Two." One.
Blam. A flashbulb of pain and then nothing.
He doesn't hear the discharge. There's a ringing in his ears that drowns everything out.
Warm, wrinkled hands shake his shoulder.
"-sir, young sir, wake up. Why on Earth are you sleeping at school? Wake up, it's time to go home."
Tony brushes the hand away.
There's a ringing in his ears, and it's the last time he'll ever hear it.
He listens. He listens.