Lima to Stockholm
Chapter Two: Rock and A Hard Place
Tony stood on an empty plain staring up at a sky alive with stars of every color imaginable. His breath caught with wonder as he cast his eyes to the sky, turning slowly to take in the glorious spectacle presented by the firmament. But as he turned he saw a malignant shadow, it spread quickly, blotting out the stars.
Tony felt a chill wind then he was standing in a river of ghosts. The souls of the dead rushed past him in uncountable numbers fleeing in terror as the shadow continued to spread. "He was once my most magnificent acolyte. It saddens me to see what he has become," a woman said. Her voice made his heart race and his lungs seize. "He must be stopped my Merchant."
Tony woke up gasping for air. He rolled out of bed and staggered across the room to the workbench Odin had given him. His hands itched to dig into the artifacts the All-Father had provided, to drag their secrets out and turn them into something to drive the shadow back.
"No strings on me."
Tony jerked back as if he'd been burned.
He paced around the room. To say it was nice was understating things, the walls were painted in gold-leaf. Whatever furniture had been in the room had been stripped out, leaving just slightly brighter patches on the floor and walls where the sunlight from the high, impossible to see anything worth seeing except the occasional flying boat, windows had been kept off. The patches gave Tony a ghostly impression of the opulent sitting room that had been.
In it's place a lab had been created. Several tables had been brought in, one at the proper height for a standing station, the other… Well the chair didn't have wheels and if that didn't show a lack of civilization Tony didn't know what did. But apart from the serious lack of wheels and spinning it was a chair chosen for functionality not form. Tools, some obvious in their purpose, others alien were hung neatly over the tables and filled an orderly tool box.
There was a bed, slightly wider than a twin but not quite a full sized pushed into one corner. It had several plump pillows and a richly embroidered quilt covering it. Still it was a big step down from any of the beds in Tony's bedrooms but if pressed to be honest he would have had to admit it that was more comfortable than the battered old couch in his lab that was his most frequently used sleeping spot. 'At least it doesn't have that one spring that always seems to end up poking into my kidney.'
The room was quiet, so well insulated that Tony had never heard so much as a footstep coming from outside. 'It wouldn't be hard to think that there was nothing out there.'
Tony's gaze strayed back to the Asgardian devices that had been brought for him to study. For a moment he thought he saw glowing eyes staring out of a polished surface at him. He shuddered and looked away.
"FRI-" Tony started to ask FRIDAY for some music to break up the silence only to remember that there was no FRIDAY here. No FRIDAY, no J.A.R.V.I.S., no Dum-E, none of the bots. Just quiet and stillness. "If this is the afterlife they could at least have given me J.A.R.V.I.S."
Slowly Tony's pacing edged him closer and closer to the workbenches. "It wouldn't hurt to look at some of the weirder tools Odin gave me. They're just tools after all." It seemed wrenches were universal, as were hammers. "No surprise there."
Tony started to reach for one of the more interesting looking tools. Just short of touching it he stopped. "Wouldn't put it past Reindeer Games to hide one of the weapons in with the tools," he muttered.
"The audience is ended!" Odin declared tapping Gungnir's butt on the marble steps leading up to the throne. He ponderously lowered himself onto Hlidskjalf and his gaze became distant as he used the throne's power to survey the furthest reaches of Asgard's sphere of influence. For a moment he looked at Earth and saw the Avengers' former Captain as his sentence was read out in court. Then his gaze moved on.
Asgard's courtiers filed out of the throne room and the guards closed the towering doors behind them before taking up their posts outside.
When he had looked his fill on his kingdom Odin stepped down from his throne and exited to his study by a modest door hidden behind the throne. Only after he'd locked the door behind him did Odin's shoulders straightened as if a weight was falling away and Loki stood revealed.
For a moment Loki's attention was captured by the sight of his reflection in the polished surface of a shield hung on the wall. Slowly, as if drawn, Loki crossed the room and reached up to touch his image, 'Are my eyes truly green? Or should they be blue? Thor and Odin's eyes are blue, as were Mother's. Wouldn't I have chosen, subconsciously to match them? Am I really so pale?' At the thought Loki's skin grew paler yet, taking on a bluish cast. He jerked his head away as he squeezed his eyes shut against the sight of himself.
Without letting himself look at his reflection again Loki summoned his magic and the years melted away leaving him as he'd appeared at a hundred and ten, the equivalent of a human eight-year-old. Without conscious choice a small smile crossed the boy's face at the thought of talking to Tony again.
Loki, Loptr as he'd introduced his child-self to Tony, quickly split the tray Odin had ordered into two meals. Pleased that he could comfortably feed both himself and the Midgardian without raising any eyebrows at Odin's appetite he picked up the trays and let himself into the All-Father's personal chambers. "I could, if my Midgardian didn't eat like a bird,' Loki amended his earlier thought as he frowned at the congealing platter of meat and gravy forgotten on the foyer table.
"Sir Tony?" Loki called in the light, high voice of a child. Then his mouth dropped open. Stark was standing on a chair balanced on top of a table peering into the wall through the hole left when the crazy Midgardian had dismantled the wall sconce.
Loki set one of the trays down and continued on to Frigga's rooms without a word. He resumed his normal form and stomped back into Odin's former sitting room. "By the Norns, what has possessed you? Why are you disassembling the light fixtures?"
"Only some of them," Tony replied around the screwdriver in his mouth. He carefully poked at the clear, glowing patches on the wires he'd stripped as he spoke. "I couldn't see if I took all of the lights apart. Some sort of fiber-optics system right? So where are you piping the light in from in the first place? What's your power source?"
"Shall I take that to mean you are only partially insane rather than completely insane?" Loki asked as he eyed Tony's precarious perch warily. "I would be rather put out if you are attempting to break neck for no good reason."
"Says the guy who threw me off a skyscraper," Tony scoffed. "Of course I've got a good reason."
"The All-Father didn't have use for you then," Loki replied. "What is this 'good reason'?"
"And you're such an obedient child," Tony snarked. He went up on his toes to stick his head and arm into the hole in the wall. "What is that?" he asked climbing up onto the arm of the chair, ignoring the ominous creak that resulted.
"What I am is terrified," Loki said flatly. "I failed Thanos. I don't care if you don't believe that pathetic attempt at an invasion of your world was deliberate self-sabotage or not, the fact remains that I failed. If he wins there will be no where in creation that I may flee to. Not even death will offer me sanctuary if Thanos has his way. I was given to understand that you shared my fear?"
"Sure, go right ahead and challenge the Ultron flashbacks with the Chitauri flashbacks," Tony groused.
The chair splintered. Tony's feet scrabbled for purchase as he clung to the crumbling edge of the hole he'd put in the wall. Loki grabbed Tony's legs and lowered him safely to the floor then stood there, silently glaring down at Tony like a disapproving parent.
As the moment of silence stretched out Tony couldn't help but fill it. "I'm not building another Ultron. If I'm going to be messing around with Asgardian tech again I need to understand it from the ground up. Last time I found an advanced-alien superweapon I reverse engineered it just enough to get it talking to my AI, which it promptly murd- destroyed. Then it tried to kill my planet. Excuse me if I want to be a little more careful this time. Starting with basic machines I'll figure out how your engineers think. Then, and only then I'll try to figure out your weapons and how us piddly mortals could stand up to something that makes you wet your pants."
"Why do you persist in indulging your irrational guilt while doom creeps ever closer to your planet?" Loki demanded angrily. "As much as it loathes me to admit it, I need you." He reached toward Tony's chest, the spot where the arc reactor had once resided. "You built a star which shielded your heart from the Mind Gem, then you built the being Vision who is able to house it. He gives the Mind Gem conscious and a moral framework, a more successful containment of an Infinity Stone I have never heard tell of in all the cosmos. But you persist in thinking only of your initial failure."
"Gee, who'd of thought 'Silver Tongue' carried weight," Tony said. "You want me to build weapons for you-"
"To stop Thanos, who will end all life."
"-And here you are telling me the things I build are good," Tony continued. "I made missiles, guns, you name it because that's what my family did, to keep our country safe. Only my beloved godfather was selling my weapons to terrorists behind my back and I never noticed because he was too good at keeping me dumb and happy, genius that I'm supposed to be."
Loki folded his hands and made a show of waiting patiently for Tony to finish.
"I think I'm doing something good, something that would protect my team and my planet and around a thousand people die. It happens because I'm careless, I'm in a hurry, because I'm fucking scared, but it's still something I did. It would have been billions dead if I hadn't managed to pull Vision out of a hat so that makes everything okay in your crazy world?
"Over sixty percent of the world tells us they, gasp, want some say in what the Avengers do. Can't imagine why after we, I, wiped an entire city off the face of the map. God- not talking about you Reindeer Games, your brother or even your dad- knows why but I think this sounds like a reasonable idea. So I get involved, try to do what I can, try to remind people that, dead city aside, my team has a pretty good track record and I'm not on it anymore so they can rest easy and give the rest of them the benefit of the doubt. Then my old teammates let a bomb go off in the middle of a market, kill a bunch of people including some great folks doing relief from this nice little country that thinks the rest of the world are a bunch of savages and who have been doing just great, beyond great, without the good old US leaning over their shoulder telling 'em how to run things. So they've really got a problem with Capicle's whole 'The safest hands are our own' spiel, Wakanda definitely does not agree that the safest hands are American, and gee what do you know that message is something the UN is receptive to, Ross just doesn't like superhumans so he's on board too and he represent the US when it comes to the Accords.
"I try and I try but I can't even make my team understand a simple thing like people get upset when we come stomping in and their loved ones die. I can't make them understand that our mistakes have gotten too big and we can't just ignore that we're scaring the rest of the world. No matter what I do I can't find the words to make them understand. Everything I try just tears the team further apart and makes us look worse in front of the world. Some genius.
"I got Rhodey crippled. I got J.A.R.V.I.S. killed. I drove Pepper away. My ego made Nat turn on me- I thought she fucking agreed with me that cooperating with the Accords with the right thing to do! I tore the team apart. All I do is make mistakes. So we get to Siberia and I screw up again, I lose it, 'cause it's my mom and it hurts and Steve lied. I screwed up, I admit it but it's one mistake too many and Steve Rogers just leaves me there to die. Because Captain America can't be bothered with my fuck-ups any more. So now you, the God of Lies comes along and tells me the stuff I make is good, 'cause- Stop, imagine this- 'Cause you want me to build more weapons. So um… I'm not buying it."
"Not just me," Loki replied. "The All-Father himself brought you back from the dead for this task."
"And then there's the very creepy lady showing up in my head," Tony muttered. "Which, yeah, listening to the voices in my head, that's a no. You're right: I am scared. The last time I was scared Ultron happened. I cannot do that again."
"I tell you, Man of Iron: You did not create the evil within Ultron. May the Norns take my tongue if I lie," Loki said with exasperation. "Your world, the world you fought so hard against me to save is imperiled. Will you allow yourself to be paralyzed by this baseless fear?"
"I was there," Tony disagreed forcefully. "Now I really want to see your tongue fall out or poof… Or whatever."
"When I held it the scepter was poisoned, reeking of malice. You and Thor, instinctual fool that he is, managed to purify it. Your Vision would not be as he is if it were otherwise," Loki stated. "Do not diminish that because the universe's very survival may depend on your ability to recreate that feat."
Tony started toward one of the artifacts, his hands shook as he reached for it. "I can't. 'He doesn't know the difference between saving the world or destroying it,' that's me. Vision or Ultron, it's just rolling the dice."
Loki angrily stepped toward him. His sharp eyes caught the small, all but repressed, movement as Tony prevented himself from flinching away and smiled. Loki slowly raised his hands, his smile widening into a demented grin as Tony proved his bravery by refusing to give ground. He rested his hands on Tony's shoulders, pulling Tony closer until the smaller man had to crane his neck back to meet his eyes. Lean down, Loki hissed, "If I fall into Thanos' hands because of your cowardice I will expend every last bit of my power to ensure that you are right beside me every step of the way."
"Brushed your teeth yet this week?" Tony asked.
Loki ignored him. "But in the meantime, if you are too fearful to exorcise your talents, I suppose I could start teaching you about magic. That is my purpose in being here. My father would never have chosen me for Valhalla for the pleasure of my company."
Tony wrinkled his nose, "Magic, hate that stuff," he said using his distaste as an excuse to shrug off Loki's hands. "Why don't you get me a nice god-pump to tear apart, maybe a generator or the engine out of one of those flying boats. I'll work my way up to alien weapons of mass destruction. Because I'm not doing magic, I'd lose my science cred."
"You needn't worry," Loki replied. "I can clearly sense that you have no capacity to perform magic. However you will learn the theory behind it."
"Give me another month or so of taking apart everything I can get my hands on, then you can start explaining the rules of- Blech! -magic to me," Tony bartered. "There are rules right? If there aren't rules… Well I'm thinking that calls for a bender. Hey, I'm dead! Does that mean I can try your God-Meade? Thor wouldn't let me."
"No," Loki replied flatly. "I have had to suffer centuries of drunken louts, I see no reason to enable another. Especially not when you might actually have the potential to be interesting."
"Flatterer."
"And how long have you been at this?" Loki scolded as he took in the amount of disassembling that Odin's former chambers had suffered. "I was given to understand mortals require sleep?"
"I'm dead, who says I have to sleep," Tony replied. A quick grin lit up his face, "Pepper would so jump on me for saying that. I'm sure she's got a tally of how many times I told her I'd sleep when I was dead."